At EFM, we’re proud of the fact that our Finance specialists go beyond accountancy to unlock the hidden business value in financially savvy decisions, and with the arrival of Paul Durno in our Associate Network, our clients have gained another seasoned professional who puts opportunity and growth front and centre in his strategy for Finance success! 

About Paul 

With over 25 years’ experience as a Finance Director within the Financial Services industry, Paul has 

never been content to approach Finance in isolation, viewing it instead as an essential component of business growth across the board. 

For this reason, he has also taken on COO responsibilities in his past career, using his Finance expertise to lead highly strategic commercial initiatives such as cross-product collaboration, cross-selling, and price negotiation, and to boost key growth opportunities through competitive analysis, recruitment, performance management, and team mentoring. 

In short, Paul knows where Finance fits into the picture, but he also knows what’s necessary to support and sustain its contribution to the business’s fortunes. 

To be sure, this is about being ceaselessly on top of the fundamentals (budgeting, forecasting), but it’s also using analytics to release indispensable intelligence from data and information, to highlight where and how a business – whatever its size, including SMEs – can play strongest with the resources at its disposal. 

Of course, like all Finance Directors, Paul deals ultimately in results, and his track-record speaks for itself on this front. The businesses whose financial strategy he led were ranked #1 in their industry throughout his tenure, and he has also presided over 300% growth in constituent business units – similar in size and challenges to SMEs – in just two years. 

In fact, Paul sees himself as an SME business partner, not just a Finance Director – and so he’ll fit in at EFM just fine! 

What Paul will help EFM to do 

Because as EFM Finance Directors we are just as focused on outcomes as outputs, Paul won’t stop at logging figures and measuring expenditure – instead, he’ll be helping to translate Finance and the opportunities that come with it into language and action plans that SME businesses and audiences can understand and work with, with growth at the very top of the agenda. 

Paul’s long experience of owning and leading revenue projects means that he will work closely with the business’s commercial functions to optimise activities that have a timely and measurable positive impact on the bottom line. 

And though these undertakings may require considerable change to the way things are currently done – which, Paul admits, can be painful – his background in managing extensive programmes at a global level has equipped him with a thorough understanding of how deploying the right technology and empowering the right people can come together to enable teams to embrace the upheaval, and rapidly turn a challenge into a win. 

For a role like this, it’s not enough to be a subject matter expert – you have to be a trusted ally and a safe pair of hands, too, and Paul’s experience of working within smaller Finance teams to build competence, confidence, and loyalty will deliver on this requirement admirably. 

In his own words 

Paul says: “I am delighted to be joining the extensive and experienced EFM network. This is a fantastic opportunity to partner with SME clients, providing Finance Director expertise and practical commercial support to help drive their business strategy in a cost-efficient manner. 

With an enjoyable corporate life behind me, I am excited to start the next chapter, working with business leaders and entrepreneurs to help them succeed through their opportunities and challenges” 

Click here to view Paul Durno’s EFM Profile.