Finance

Confessions of an education CFO: why finance for academic organisations needn’t be a headache

Published

4 weeks ago

February 9, 2026

Confessions of an education CFO: why finance for academic organisations needn’t be a headache

When you’re running a business of whatever size, it’s critical to know your numbers – but when you’re running the finances for 22 schools, it’s even more imperative to get your maths right.

Established in 2016, Sapientia Education Trust (SET) is responsible for more than 8,500 pupils and 1,300 staff across Norfolk and Suffolk. However, until 2022, the administration of its finances was still being done the old school way – manually – with piles of paper-based files and spreadsheets.

Steven Dewing, SET’s chief financial officer, says: “When I joined in September 2021, the team were struggling. The trust was recovering after Covid, and getting invoices paid on time and reports delivered on time was a challenge.”

The system being used by the trust was adopted back when it encompassed just five schools. By the time Dewing joined, the number of schools had risen to 15 – each with its own database and no sharing of data. “There were lots of silos.”

Dewing recalls how his deputy needed a whole day each month simply to reconcile it all, with numbers pulled out and manually put on to consolidated spreadsheets. Only then could data be manipulated into the right formats needed.

“That was not uncommon for finance departments,” he says, “but it is very prone to error. Also, invoices were being manually signed, requisitions were written by hand, and because we had a different system for each school, we couldn’t join these up. People physically carried around loads of paper, so it was hard to maintain compliance.”

‘Everything in one database’

All this changed in September 2022 when SET moved to a new system, Sage Intacct, which was rolled out with the support of ION, a Sage Education implementation partner.

And for a trust that includes the country’s largest state boarding school with 1,400 children alongside small, rural primary schools with as few as 16 pupils, the finance platform was a gamechanger.

The trust includes the country’s largest state boarding school

“Now we have everything in one database,” says Dewing. “Each school is still its own entity, but it’s all shared so there is no manual reconciling, it all just happens in the system.”

He adds that using Intacct has also meant SET can combine purchasing across the trust, allowing it to benefit from economies of scale and supplier discounts, while reducing the admin of having to purchase across all its schools.

He also highlights the platform’s ease of use and describes how having access to personalised dashboards for every user has been a massive step forward. “We used to pull out data and then email it to people,” he says, “but now depending on what level you are and what your role is, there are different dashboards. Users can go in and see information whenever they want and drill down to the transaction. It has enabled us to empower them with data they need, when they need it.”

Successful use cases for this part of the implementation include head teachers in SET’s small rural schools seeing an accurate and real-time position of their finances, with staff able to login from any location any time to study the data and reports.

“What’s good is we can pull in non-financial information too, like pupil numbers and staff numbers,” adds Dewing. “You can then combine that with other data to give cost per student, cost per staff member, and much more, without any Excel manipulation.”

Adding up the time saved with AI

Within SET’s finance department, a pool of four people is responsible for multiple schools reporting to Dewing. Below this there are others who input transactions, invoices and payments.

To ensure the department was up to speed from day one, ION provided training in Sage Intacct during the onboarding process. It offered Dewing and his colleagues a structured programme, which the CFO says was a major help given “it’s a really big bit of software with lots of different functionality”.

AI tools have proved to be an invaluable timesaver for processing invoices

“Having someone guide you through it and teach you what it does, while making sure you’re doing the right things at the right time, was vital,” he says. “We broke the training down into four two-hour sessions rather than one whole day and also got them to record some short videos, which we continue to use.”

Dewing has found a number of Sage Intacct’s AI-driven tools particularly useful. For instance, Outlier Detection, which automatically spots data appearing in odd patterns and suggests corrections, and Accounts Payable Automation, which uses AI to populate invoices against purchase orders.

Given that SET processes more than 25,000 invoices a year, this represents a transformational timesaver for colleagues who no longer have to input the details themselves and simply now check over the AI-prepared documents.

Dewing cites this as just one key example of how the move to Sage Intacct has revolutionised what his finance team can do for the wider trust.

“It has enabled finance to move from a pure admin function, where you carry bits of paper around and get things paid, to a strategic partner in the organisation,” he says. It’s become less about ‘have we paid this on time or have we ordered that’, because that just happens through the system.

“We can now spend far more time supporting people to take financial decisions and in budgeting. Sage Intacct has changed our relationships with the schools because they see what value we bring.”

Find out more about Sage Intacct and book a demo, at: sage.com

Finance

Deutsche Bank’s Expanding Sports Finance Strategy

Published

12 hours ago

March 8, 2026

Press Room

Deutsche Bank’s Expanding Sports Finance Strategy

As the business side of team sports, such as football, becomes larger and more complex, the opportunities for banks to provide financing solutions for the individuals and institutions involved proliferate. At Deutsche Bank’s private bank, it sees considerable opportunities ahead.

With American and other non-UK investors/owners buying into UK
football teams, it has highlighted that handling the
financial side of sports is now a distinct asset class that even
those uninterested in sports should consider.

Deutsche Bank’s private banking arm certainly considers sports
finance a sufficiently large area to warrant a specialist
offering, as announced
a few days ago. The business focuses on Europe and the
US.

The financing business is led by Arjun Nagarkatti, who is the
head of the private bank for the US and Europe international
business. Deutsche
Bank has appointed Sowmya Kotha in London and Joshua Frank in
New York, who report to Adam Russ, head of wealth management and
business lending.

“Sport can be a local passion project. However, it is becoming
more of a legitimate asset class. Even a non-sports person should
look at sports,” Nagarkatti told WealthBriefing in a
meeting at the German bank’s London offices in the City. “These
are big businesses and a lot of people still don’t know how big
they are.”

Family offices/ultra HNW individuals are trying to take
a “more institutional” approach to transacting in sports
teams, he said.

Setting up such a business feeds into the specialist lending and
financial advisory work that Deutsche has discussed
with this publication in recent months. (See
an example here – via Hong Kong.) This work uses the
combined private bank/investment banking connections where
private clients will also have operating business concerns.

The sports financing business shows that this area is not simply
a private banking niche. Rival Citigroup, for example,

spoke to this news service in 2025 about its work with
ultra-wealthy people wanting to buy, sell and run sports teams.
Our US correspondent recently wrote about opportunities for
wealth management arising from changes in college
sports.

The expanded capability at Deutsche on the sports side is
“significant for the bank,” Nagarkatti said. “It is a core focus
for us.”

UHNW sports owners/potential owners tend to be ideal clients –
they are internationally minded, want advice and guidance on
financial/personal wealth matters, he continued. “This is a big
opportunity for us and it is a consistent connection we have had
with clients, and we have been doing this for 10 to 15
years.”

Deutsche is initially concentrating on the English Premier
League. As its US franchise has expanded, this has led to
financing across all four major US sports leagues: National
Football League; Major League Baseball; National Basketball
Association, and National Hockey League.

Mention of cross-border owners of clubs leads to potential owners
of, say, a UK football club needing to understand that when
they buy a team, they’re also buying into hopes and dreams.
Owners raise their heads above a parapet – not always a fun
experience.

“You become a public figure,” Nagarkatti said.

One example that springs to mind is Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the
billionaire founder of INEOS, the chemical producer who took
a 27.7 per cent stake in Manchester United more than a year
ago. While well known in business circles before buying into the
“Red Devils” –

one of the most famous sports institutions in the world – his
profile has risen since, with every comment – controversial or
otherwise – analysed, not always kindly.

American owners of teams have to adjust to the risk, for example
when a football (soccer) team gets relegated, Nagarkatti
said. Anyone looking to own a club must understand risks,
including how their public profile, assuming they were very
private people, rises rapidly, and in ways that are not always
comfortable if a team has problems, he said.

There is a need for realism.

“When you buy these top assets, you must spend time and work them
and increase their value. You must be prepared to invest time,
such as on the team, stadiums, facilities,” Nagarkatti said. “It
is like buying a hotel. You cannot just sit there and think it
will go up in value by 10 times.”

For the wealth management industry in general, the business of
sports teams, as well as the individual financial affairs of
sportsmen and women, has become a distinct – and large –
specialism. For example, the Rockefeller Global Family Office has
experts who look after athletes and entertainers. Other firms
that have expertise in and around sports include Carnegie Private
Wealth, for example, and Merrill Lynch Management. In the UK, the
private banking group Coutts has a sports, media and
entertainment division for its wealthy clients. Standard
Chartered, the UK-listed bank with a significant presence in
Asia, has launched a new alternative fund focused on sports for
ultra-high net worth and high net worth clients under its Global
Private Bank. Standard Chartered is a sponsor of Liverpool
FC.

Deutsche Bank announced 2025 full-year and fourth-quarter
financial results here.

Finance

Retired Aussies facing sad $60,000 superannuation reality impacting millions: ‘Very real’

Published

1 day ago

March 8, 2026

Press Room

Retired Aussies facing sad ,000 superannuation reality impacting millions: ‘Very real’

Aussies are still facing a super gender gap, with women approaching retirement with thousands less than men. (Source: AAP/Getty)

Australians now need a record amount of superannuation to afford a comfortable retirement, and one group is still lagging significantly behind. Women are approaching retirement with tens of thousands of dollars less in superannuation than men, but there are moves that can be made now to help close the gap.

By the age of 40 to 44, men have a median super balance of $108,344, compared to women with $79,445 – a gap of nearly $30,000. This gap peaks in the 55 to 59 age range, where men have $202,584 on average and women $140,662 – a difference of more than $60,000.

AustralianSuper deputy chief executive and chief member officer Rose Kerlin told Yahoo Finance while we’ve seen some improvements over time, the super gender gap is “still very real” and becomes the most obvious as women approached retirement.

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“A big part of the gap comes down to caregiving and disparities in pay. When women take time out of the workforce or move into part-time roles to care for children or family members, their super takes a hit, and that impact compounds year after year,” she said.

This gap is particularly worrying now that a single homeowner aged 67 needs a lump sum of $630,000, up from $595,000, to achieve a comfortable retirement. Couple homeowners need a balance of $730,000 in super, which is up from $690,000.

In contrast, the latest ATO data shows men at or approaching retirement at 60 to 64 have a median balance of $219,73, while women have $163,218.

The government has flagged reforms to help address the gap. Since July last year, superannuation has been paid on government parental leave payments.

From July next year, the Low Income Superannuation Tax Offset (LISTO) income threshold will increase from $37,000 to $45,000 to align with the top of the second income-tax bracket. The maximum LISTO payment will increase from $500 to $810.

While policy reform is important, Kerlin said there were also things women could do now to feel more on top of their super and more confident about where they’re headed.

“Small actions today can help build greater confidence and security for the years ahead,” she said.

One action could be making additional contributions, even small ones, whenever possible, as this could make a big difference over time.

AustralianSuper’s modelling found that someone who made after-tax contributions of $600 annually between the ages of 35 to 39 and met the eligibility criteria for the government’s co-contribution of $300 each year could retire with $9,000 more.

Finance

UNO restructures finance team, announces changes to campus

Published

2 days ago

March 7, 2026

Press Room

UNO restructures finance team, announces changes to campus

Editor’s note: WWNO is licensed to the University of New Orleans but is funded independently and reports on the university like any other school.

The University of New Orleans is making changes to its financial structure and campus as it prepares to transition back to the LSU System on July 1.

UNO, which officials have already started referring to as LSU New Orleans, has hired Jeanette Weiland as its interim chief administrative officer, a reconfigured role the school’s president says will strengthen its finances.

Weiland previously served as chief business officer of Tulane University’s School of Science & Engineering. She started on a contract basis in January and was hired as an employee on March 1.

In an email to staff this week, President Kathy Johnson said Weiland’s position will span more departments than before, making forecasting and budgeting easier.

“For many years, some of our financial challenges have stemmed from the way separate revenue sources have operated in parallel rather than in alignment,” Johnson said.

The university eliminated its vice president for finance and administration as part of the restructuring, Johnson said, and will hire an interim chief financial officer to work under Weiland.

Arlean Wehle had been serving in both roles, on an interim basis, after Edwin Litolff left for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette last summer. Johnson thanked Wehle for her “tireless work ethic, her steady leadership, and her unwavering commitment to our mission.”

UNO has struggled financially in recent years, which officials have attributed to low enrollment and poor management. The school currently enrolls fewer than 6,000 students, down from more than 17,000 at its peak before Hurricane Katrina.

While faculty and staff have specific concerns about the transition, according to a survey conducted by LSU, more than 60% of students, alumni and faculty support the move.

Officials have promised to revive the university by sharing system resources, eliminating some programs, expanding those it says are unique and successful — like UNO’s naval architecture and marine engineering school — and rebranding the campus as part of the LSU family.

In the same email, Johnson said UNO will lease a building to its neighbor, Benjamin Franklin High School, starting in June, and plans to close its oldest academic building at the end of the semester.

Franklin has been looking for room to expand, rather than cap its enrollment. The school plans to take over the Human Performance Center.

Johnson said the lease will strengthen the existing partnership between the two, “while generating revenue” that UNO needs. Franklin will move out of the classrooms it uses in a campus building that’s farther away, freeing those up.

The terms of the lease with Franklin are still being negotiated, Johnson said in an email to WWNO. It will likely go before the University of Louisiana System board in April, which UNO remains part of until July 1.

The Liberal Arts Building, the facility slated to close, houses the following departments: English, foreign languages, philosophy, history and elements of anthropology.

Johnson said the decision was reached based on UNO’s financial standing and a facility analysis by an outside firm.

“This is not a decision made lightly,” she said in the email. “We simply do not have the resources required to restore it to acceptable standards.”

Departments housed in both impacted buildings will be relocated to other parts of the campus.