A story behind the startup – Get to know with "Retruster"

Michael Snape, CFO, Retruster

The role of a CFO has expanded tremendously over the past decade. Gone are the days of being a “rubber stamp” for the CEO’s decisions, or only ensuring that the financial reports comply with the relevant standards. The modern CFO brings a diverse range of skills to the position, including strategic thinking, and relationship management – with both internal and external stakeholders.

As a CFO of a large fashion retail chain, part of my responsibilities was ensuring that our relationships with suppliers were smooth; that people got paid when they should, and that strategic partners were well looked after.

So when I received an email late one night from the CEO, who was in China at the time, asking me to transfer money to a supplier there that we’d just agreed favorable terms with, I duly made the transfer immediately.

A few days later, we discovered that the email from the CEO was a fake. There was no deal, and we had to scramble to recover our money. The problem was, the email looked so real – it even came from the CEO’s email account!

This is a relatively new threat that companies are having to deal with, and this is why we started Retruster. The threat could be in the form of an email asking to approve a transaction, like in this case, or it could be an email delivering malware, ransomware or a virus (90% of malware and ransomware is delivered via email). And the person being scammed can be anyone from the CEO to a brand new intern.

So please: stay alert, and take all the measures necessary to protect yourself and your business. Whether it’s tightening internal controls, or engaging a solution such as Retruster. This has become a strategic threat that all companies should be planning to deal with. As a CFO specifically, you can take the lead in combating this threat.