The sound of your locked car door closing with the keys inside brings forth an immediate sense of dread. Or the sight of a plume of smoke from your vehicle on the highway in the middle of nowhere. After a few frantic moments and maybe a curse word or two, most people take a deep breath and pull out their phone, making a call they wish they didn’t have to place.
Every year, British Columbia Automobile Association (BCAA) roadside assistance technicians respond to approximately 420,000 of these types of situations. On average, BCAA members make that call every 2.86 years.
For Clayton Buckingham, senior vice-president and chief financial officer for BCAA, helping provide a “guardian angel” through the organization’s roadside assistance technicians is something he takes very seriously.
“We take great pride in this,” Buckingham said. “It’s amazing to work for an organization that actually rescues people at the roadside and helps protect their homes, cars and health.”
Buckingham said that while its guardian-angel aspect is BCAA’s most public persona, the 109-year-old association has been rapidly expanding and evolving. Of BCAA’s $511 million total sales for 2015, only 12% came from membership fees while 86% ($440 million) came from its insurance operations. BCAA is even expanding into car sharing with Evo Car Share.
“Although roadside assistance is the heart of our organization, we’ve grown to be so much more,” he said. “Across all of our products including membership, insurance, car sharing and auto service locations, we serve nearly one million British Columbians, or one in three households in the province.”
When it comes to the day-to-day operations of BCAA and his position as CFO, Buckingham said being a CFO has also changed over the years, and the role has expanded beyond the number-crunching aspect of the job.
“I believe that CFOs nowadays need to be flexible, curious and collaborative,” he said. “It’s not enough to simply be a technical financial expert. Given our skill set and central role in the organization, CFOs have the opportunity to be enablers within the organization and to play a key part in developing corporate strategy.”
The 34-year-old said changing what has sometimes been a rigidly numerical perspective doesn’t come easy, but most embrace it after a little persuasion.
“When I first arrived at BCAA, finance was so focused on compliance that it was seen as a barrier to moving the organization forward,” he said. “Today we’re seen as a key part of the decision-making process and as a source of knowledge and expertise. I would like to think that my open style and focus on building diverse teams that have broad knowledge of the organization have had something to do with that.”
Buckingham said his daily schedule can be very eclectic, – there is no “average day” – but he likes the variety of challenges. He works on everything from accounting, treasury and financial planning to underwriting, actuarial services, claims and compliance. He also added that a CFO is only as good as the people who work for him.
“I lead an amazing team of people in each of these areas so I don’t often have to get too involved in the details,” he said. “This frees me up to spend most of my days with the other members of the executive team developing our strategies and addressing our challenges or working with sister clubs in CAA [Canadian Automobile Association] and AAA (American Automobile Association] or our various partners to help strengthen our capabilities.”
Tim Condon, president and CEO of AAA and former president and CEO of BCAA, said this is what makes Buckingham so good at what he does.
“Clayton has a tremendous gift for explaining complex concepts in very simple terms,” Condon said.
“In one board meeting, he essentially explained a complex global network of reinsurance relationships and the entire earthquake insurance industry in just a few PowerPoint slides. He is incredibly gifted at helping others to understand complicated subject matter.”
His expertise is not limited to the professional realm, Condon added.
“We once had dinner at a Michelin-rated restaurant in London, England. Our conversation covered several books he was reading – history, geography, as he has travelled extensively, sports beyond hockey and various types of food.
“It was quite a dinner. For someone so young, he has accumulated a tremendous amount of life experience.”
Join us June 2 when Business in Vancouver celebrates the 2016 BC CFO Awards at the Four Seasons Vancouver. For further information or to register for the event visit the events page at www.biv.com/cfo.
