884: Understanding Your Business Thesis | Betsy Ward, CFO, MassMutual

Finance leader Betsy Ward wants you to know that she doesn’t have an itchy trigger finger—but she does have an inner trigger and knows when it’s been set off.

There’s no doubt that few professional colleagues would ever think to associate the time-tested gunslinger trope with the exponentially mild-mannered Ward, who has led insurance giant MassMutual through a string of strategic transactions since her arrival in its CFO office in 2016.

Still, as Ward seeks to help us to better understand the unique mix of skills that distinguishes her from her CFO peers, her words alert us to a confidence that comes from experience not found on a more traditional corporate finance resume.

“I have a trigger that lets me know when I need to look into something and ask myself ‘Do we keep that? Do I need to manage it? Do I need to sell?,’” explains Ward, who spent 10 years in asset management before joining MassMutual in 2007 as chief risk officer.

“I’ve always looked at outcomes—baseline outcomes, which in finance we typically call ‘the plan’—but I’ve always considered scenarios, too,” comments Ward, whose list of recent transactions includes the acquisition of Great American Life Insurance Company (now MassMutual Ascend) and the combination of OppenheimerFunds with Invesco in 2019.

Ward’s team uses a variety of metrics to bring different scenarios into sharper focus.

“We asked ourselves what it would take to make our retirement business not only perform well but also be more scalable, and here’s where our productivity metrics really came into play,” recalls Ward, highlighting MassMutual’s headline-grabbing decision to sell its retirement business to Empower in 2020.

According to MassMutual’s CFO, finance provides her organization not so much with advice as with a “thesis” for guiding business decision-making.

Says Ward: “I think that what my background brings to the financial side is this scenario type of analysis, as well as the notion of having a thesis for businesses, for assets, and for products.” –Jack Sweeney