Detours ahead
As accounting jobs go, it doesn't get much better. CFO of a big bank, working with a respected chief executive, in an organisation you love. But when Steve McKerihan, the CFO of St George Bank, saw a job advertised in his local church newsletter last year he thought: "This could be what I'm really meant to do."
In July, McKerihan left St George after a 30-year career in banking to work for the Anglican Church as chief executive of the Sydney Diocesan Secretariat. The numbers are a lot smaller: a balance sheet measured in the hundreds of millions, instead of $100 billion; 90 staff rather than 200 (out of St George's 8500); and a pay packet that has shrunk by two-thirds. Yet McKerihan, in an interview one month into his new role, says he feels better prepared than he did for his only other job switch, when he left the Commonwealth Bank to join St George 22 years ago. "I don't feel I'm taking a step backwards," he says. "The operations are on a different scale, but I'm still working with very professional people."