Looking to land a CFO role? 2025 was a good year

Opportunities for finance professionals interested in pursuing a CFO role increased year over year at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies in 2025, including a spike in the percentage of companies hiring CFOs internally.

According to the annual Crist | Kolder Associates Volatility Report, the 664 companies in the Fortune 500 or S&P 500 (or both) had 120 CFO turnovers in 2025, up 17.7% from the 102 CFO turnovers at 667 companies the previous year. Sixty-five percent of CFOs hired in 2025 were internal; just once since 2015, by fractions of a percent, was the percentage of internal promotions higher (65.3% in 2022).

All told, one CFO change occurred in 2025 for every 5.5 companies in the Crist | Kolder sample, and 1 in 8.5 companies hired an internal candidate for a vacant CFO seat.

Of all sitting CFOs at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies, less than one-quarter landed in their current role directly from another CFO chair.

More findings from Crist | Kolder research:

• The age gap between the average newly hired CFO (51.9) and average newly hired CEO (53.2) dropped to 1.3 years in 2025, the smallest gap in data that dates to 2015. Over the previous eight years in the report, the average CEO was 4.9 years older than the average CFO at hire.

• On the CEO side, 78 chairs changed hands in 2025 (one for every 8.5 companies). The average tenure of sitting CEOs was 7.5 years. For CFOs, it was 4.7 years.

• The percentage of ethnically diverse CEOs rose in 2025 (14.6% vs. 13.5% in 2024), while the CFO percentages fell slightly (14.7% vs. 14.9%). In the first year of data in the report (2015), 6.9% of CEOs and 5.9% of CFOs were ethnically diverse.

• While little changed between 2024 and 2025 when it came to female representation, women occupied 16.5% of CFO seats last year compared with 12.2% a decade ago and 9.1% of CEO seats last year compared with 4.3%.

• About 37% of sitting CFOs majored in accounting in college. About 10% of sitting CEOs were accounting majors.

• About 3 in 8 sitting CFOs have public accounting experience, predominantly at PwC, EY, Deloitte, KPMG, or Arthur Andersen.

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Bryan Strickland at Bryan.Strickland@aicpa-cima.com.