There’s one topic I hear consistently come up in discussions amongst financial institution leaders: succession planning. Or, as I call it, The Succession Elephant – the awkward, looming, unsolved topic occupying space in boardrooms across the country. Leaders know turnover is happening. They know it’s an aggressive risk. Yet they often don’t know where to start tackling it.

This very topic was a core focus of my breakout session at the FMS Forum in New Orleans this past June. Because it's so critical – yet rarely nipped in the bud – I wanted to share a strategic framework for solving 'the succession elephant' before facing unexpected vacancies and their broader implications without a safety net in place.

When most people hear the phrase "succession planning," they picture a static, five-year retirement roadmap for senior leadership. But in today's fast-moving market, true succession planning doesn’t solely address risks in the far-off future – it heads off potential interruptions as soon as next week’s PTO, vacation schedules, and parental leave.

Real operational continuity means building a team that can move forward without missing a beat, whether a desk is empty for a two-week summer vacation, a sudden medical leave, an internal promotion, or unexpected mid-year turnover.

If we strip away the corporate jargon that too often muddles this conversation, the core objective becomes clear: we must decouple institutional success from the individual. When a department eliminates single points of failure, the natural byproduct is a significantly more agile financial institution for everyone on the team. As an example, many organizations still rely on elaborate spreadsheets for financial reporting. Because these manual processes are often maintained by a single person, companies face significant risks regarding human error and key-person dependency.

The Corporate Continuity Crisis by the Numbers

Unlike decades ago, when workplace loyalty was customary, succession planning was most necessary for retirement. However, financial institutions are getting hit with surprising turnover rates, hovering as high as 25% to 35% for front-line employees and 20% for non-officer professional roles (Crowe LLP, 2023). That’s not even touching on the C-suite statistics.

The reality is that financial institutions are operating in a severe talent crunch. We can no longer afford to treat business continuity as a back-burner project. The 2026 Global CFO Turnover Index confirms this, reporting that CFO churn has hit a seven-year high (Russell Reynolds Associates, 2026). The data doesn’t stop there:

Historically, financial operations teams have operated within a labyrinth of self-built, highly customized spreadsheets controlled by a single person, often the CFO. But when an entire institution's primary training manual is unwritten tribal knowledge, it creates two massive points of failure that impact every role from analyst to executive:

• The Personalization Wall: When examiners, the board, or leadership want a specific strategic view, the department can't pivot quickly because it involves a series of manual manipulations. 
  
  
• The Training Nightmare: Trying to hand off a decade’s worth of unwritten tribal knowledge to a successor or backup user under pressure is a high-risk, nearly impossible undertaking that is incredibly stressful for both the trainer and the trainee. The risk here is that top tier talent won’t put up with this style of transition and may opt to leave out of frustration rather than deal with the chaos.

The Solution: Build a Department That Doesn't Break

Achieving this level of organizational agility requires a practical shift in daily operations. Institutions must actively move away from fragile, single-point-of-failure systems by pairing the right technology with documented playbooks and strategic backup support.

To achieve this, we suggest utilizing a four-step framework designed to balance performance today with continuity tomorrow. Let’s discuss each using Plansmith’s budgeting and IRR software as an example.

1. Centralize Your Data

Move your budgeting, forecasting, and ALM logic out of fragmented personal spreadsheets and into an integrated financial modeling platform that gets its data from a single source of truth (e.g., core data). Housing your logic in a shared platform eliminates the operational vulnerability of broken links and unverified calculations. It ensures your financial modeling remains intact, accessible, and trainable during unexpected staffing transitions, ultimately eliminating key person dependencies and protecting the institution from potentially catastrophic spreadsheet errors.

2. Outsource the 'Heavy Lifting'

Preserve your internal team capacity by distinguishing between what your department should own (strategy and decision making) and what you should outsource (the execution). Trust specialized partners to handle high-capacity technical tasks like board training, decay studies, prepayment studies, back-testing, and sensitivity testing to free up valuable bandwidth. You may even find that fully outsourced ALM/IRR programs are the best option for your organization, as it’s often more affordable than hiring someone to execute all the tasks associated with compliance.

3. Leverage Partners for Technical Training

Software onboarding shouldn't consume your leadership team’s valuable time. By offloading technical training and software mechanics to your vendor partners, you protect your executives from the training bottleneck and keep their focus on institutional strategy and mentoring up-and-coming leaders.

4. Focus on Strategic Knowledge Transfer

 Centralizing your data, divesting time-intensive specialized tasks, and transferring technical training to vendors allows your senior team to pivot from data management and manual report building to insight interpretation, data-driven decision making, and mentorship. This shifted capacity can be used to train successors and backup staff on the nuances of financial institution planning, including high-level risk management, scenario testing, and analyzing the broader implications your numbers are telling you. 

Training vs. Knowledge Transfer: Training is just mechanics – the what and the how. It’s important, but it’s only part of the puzzle. Knowledge transfer is the why. Financial planning for financial institutions is uniquely complex. By using technology to handle the system mechanics, leaders and their teams can finally transfer the nuanced, theoretical wisdom that takes decades to build.

Creating Operational Peace of Mind

We need to stop viewing modern technology and succession planning as two separate corporate projects. When an institution has the right systems and outsourced advisory services in place to perform in the modern age, it is, by default, poised for smooth succession at every level of the org chart.

But more importantly, individuals involved in financial planning reclaim their true potential – shifting their focus to interpreting insights and driving strategic decisions instead of laboriously gathering data.

Teams realize better performance today because the data is reliable. Departments are protected from burnouts by building a resilient, shared safety net. And the next time a key team member takes a well-deserved summer vacation, or you get ready to step away for your own PTO, you can do so with complete peace of mind.

True succession planning protects the day-to-day operations by creating seamless handoffs and leaving a defensible system behind.

At Plansmith, our goal is to help you build this reality on your own terms. Whether your institution simply needs a centralized in-house financial modeling platform, or you want to layer in customizable advisory services or even full outsourcing solutions, the scope of support is entirely driven by what is best for your organization.

If this resonates with you, give us a call. We’d love to assist in automating processes that eliminate silos and bring you greater peace of mind. 

Megan Plis Mitchem
Director of Marketing

Sources & References

• Bank Director, 2024–2025 Governance Gap Report: Executive Turnover in Community Banking.
• Crowe LLP, 2023 Bank Compensation and Benefits Survey: High Turnover Rates and Talent Competition in the Financial Sector.
• Darling Consulting Group, 2026 Annual Report on Risk Management and Model Integrity.
• Deloitte, CFO Signals: Q1 2025 Survey Results (North America Research).
• Russell Reynolds Associates, 2026 Global CFO Turnover Index: 2025 Year-End Analysis.