Most of the first-90-days checklists for new CFOs are written by software companies, and you can often tell by step four, which tends to be some version of "evaluate your tech stack." They're not wrong about the rest. Meet the team, learn the close, find out where the spreadsheets are hiding. But nearly everything on those lists is about the inside of the company, and the part that catches a lot of new CFOs off guard in the first 90 days sits outside it.
I mean the lender who already has opinions about the company, the three customers who make up more of the revenue than anyone mentioned in the interview, the competitor who cut prices in the spring, and whatever the board chair read on the plane last week. Nobody hands you a binder on that stuff. You're expected to know it, usually by the second board meeting.
Why getting up to speed as a new CFO is mostly an outside problem
There are a lot of new CFOs right now. Crist Kolder's midyear report, covered by the Journal of Accountancy in September, has CFO turnover at the largest US public companies (the Fortune 500 and S&P 500) on pace for 18.3% this year, and the average age of new CFO hires dropped to 48.2 from 51.9 in 2025. Those are big companies, and nobody tracks the mid market as carefully, but there's no reason to think the smaller end is calmer.
The same report found 62.5% of those hires were internal promotions, which is higher than I'd have guessed. An internally promoted controller or VP of finance already knows the ledger cold, but may never have sat across from the lender, heard the largest customer's procurement team explain their plans, or had to tell a board why a competitor's quarter looks better. An outside hire has the opposite gap. Both end up with the same homework, and it's the outside part.
What to learn before your first day
If the company is public, you've probably already read the 10-K. If it's private, which is more likely at this size, the public record is thinner but not empty. Where to start:
- The biggest customers' own news. If any of them are public, their earnings calls and 10-Qs will tell you more about next year's volume than your new company's forecast will. EDGAR's full-text search is free and underrated.
- The two or three competitors people mention in the interview. Their press releases, pricing moves, hiring and any public financials.
- Whatever regulation, tariff or input cost the business is most exposed to, and what's changed on it in the last six months.
- Anything public about the debt: a lender's press release, a UCC filing, a rating if there is one.
Pre-call research was most of how I spent eleven years in sales, and the thing I learned doing it is that an hour of reading about the other side of the table makes the first conversation completely different. A new CFO walking into a first meeting with the CEO is in the same spot. We wrote more about the pre-offer version of this in how to walk into a CFO interview already knowing their problems.
Using CFOmarketIQ to get up to speed on a new company
This is the part where I talk about what we built, since it's close to the reason we built it. CFOmarketIQ produces a briefing for a specific company: you give it the company name and website, and our agents research the rest from public sources. It goes through news, filings, policy notices and macro data, and it ties each item back to something on that company's balance sheet or P&L, like a customer, a supplier, a competitor, the debt or an input cost. Every item carries its source and the date it was published, and the ones likely to matter most are at the top.
For a new CFO there are two ways to use it.
Before you start. A one-time report costs $149 and can be run on any company, including one you've just accepted an offer from. You'll get a read on the outside forces hitting the business before your first day, which beats trying to piece it together from Google between your two-week notice and your start date.
Once you're in the seat. The first briefing is free, and it usually arrives within about 20 minutes. There's a form with optional fields for debt structure, customer concentration, goals and the companies you want tracked. I'd leave most of them blank on day one and let the research fill them in. Then, once you've read the credit agreement and seen the real customer list, go back and fill those fields in yourself. Debt terms and customer concentration are the two things public sources are worst at, and they happen to be the two a new CFO learns fastest from the inside, so the briefings get noticeably sharper after that.
What to do with it: print the first one and use it as a question list. Anything tied to a customer turns into a question for the head of sales, and the debt items go on the list for your first lender meeting. You'll probably find a couple of things the team already knew and never wrote down, and you'll find out quickly whether the rest of the leadership team reads the outside world at all.
It won't tell you how the close works or which person on the team is holding the whole thing together, and you'll only find that out by walking around and asking.
A first 90 days that covers the outside, too
- Days 1 to 30. Meet the team and learn the close, obviously. But also meet the lender, even if it's just coffee, and sit in on at least one call with each of the top five customers. Get the first outside briefing and turn it into your question list.
- Days 31 to 60. Rebuild the 13-week cash forecast yourself, or at least walk through it line by line. Read the credit agreement front to back, covenants and concentration limits included. Fill in the briefing fields you now know better than public sources do.
- Days 61 to 90. Put together your own view of the next year's assumptions (price, input costs, rates, your biggest customers' plans) and test it against what peers are telling their investors. That's the page you'll want in front of the board at your first real meeting.
None of that is complicated, although protecting time for it once the inbox finds you on day two is harder than it sounds.
CFOmarketIQ sends mid market CFOs a regular briefing on the outside events hitting their company, and the first one is free.
Questions new CFOs ask about their first 90 days
What should a new CFO do in the first 90 days?
Learn the team and the close, but spend real time on the outside too: meet the lender, sit in on calls with the largest customers, read the credit agreement and understand what competitors and the market are doing. By day 90 you want your own view of next year's assumptions, ready for the board.
How can a new CFO get up to speed on a company quickly?
Read the public record on the company, its largest customers and its main competitors, then fill in what's private through meetings and documents. A briefing service like CFOmarketIQ can pull the outside picture together in one place, with sources and dates, so your first meetings are built around specific questions instead of general ones.
What should a CFO research before starting a new job?
The company's biggest customers and competitors, any public information about its debt, the regulations or input costs it's most exposed to, and recent news that might come up in your first board meeting. If the company is private, customers' and competitors' public filings often tell you more than the company's own footprint.
Is an internally promoted CFO already up to speed?
On the inside, mostly. An internal promotion typically knows the ledger and the close well. The gaps tend to be outside, in the lender relationship, what the biggest customers are planning and what the board expects. Those take deliberate work in the first few months, the same as for an outside hire.
A note on all of this: it is general information, not financial, legal or tax advice. Run anything you plan to act on past your own advisors first.