Mike Kovar, CFO and Treasurer at Acra Lending, gave this presentation at the Chief Financial Officer Summit in May 2023.

I’m Mike Kovar, and today I’ll be talking about optimizing your strategy to account for downturns and ESG factors. More specifically, I’ll be covering:

Preparing for downturns

I've been in financial services pretty much my whole life, and interest rate changes and downturns are a part of living for me. How I prepare for downturns is to think long-term. Look as far ahead as you possibly can to avoid surprises. 

But it’s not just about looking ahead at the long-term, but looking at trends and creating a trends committee. What's going on? 

This is where young employees can really provide some great value. My 18-year-old son is big into technology and he'd be the greatest person to put on this trends committee. I’d be the worst person to put on this trends committee because I'm not really using all of this new technology so I'm not seeing where it's going. So this long-term focus and trends committee would be a big benefit for everybody.