"Should we just hire someone?" is usually the first question once a business realises it needs senior financial leadership. Here's how the two options actually compare once every cost is on the table.
A salary figure is only the starting point. Once you add employer's National Insurance, pension contributions, a bonus or car allowance, benefits, recruitment fees, and the cost of the role sitting empty while you find the right person, a full-time Finance Director for a growing SME typically costs considerably more than the headline salary suggests — often 25–35% on top. For most businesses under roughly £15m turnover, that's a significant fixed cost carried every month, whether there's five days of FD-level work that week or half a day.
A fractional FD is engaged for the days the business actually needs — typically one to three days a month to start, flexing up around a forecast, a funding round, or a system change. You get the same calibre of person — usually someone who's already sat in the FD or finance director chair for other businesses — without carrying a full salary, NI, pension and benefits package for capacity that sits unused most of the month.
The real question isn't "which is cheaper" — it's "how much FD-level work does the business actually generate in a month?" Most businesses under £15m turnover generate two to six days of it, not twenty.
There's a point where full-time is the right call — usually once a business is consistently generating enough FD-level work to fill most of a working week: multiple entities, a finance team that needs day-to-day management, or a pace of change (acquisitions, funding rounds, systems projects) that needs someone in the building every day. That's a real threshold, and it's worth recognising rather than avoiding once you've reached it.
Below that threshold, fractional support tends to outperform a full-time hire on value, not just cost. You get someone who has already made the decisions your business is facing for the first time — because they've made them several times before, elsewhere. And because the arrangement isn't a fixed employment contract, it flexes: more time around a forecast or a raise, less in a quieter month, without a redundancy conversation on either side if circumstances change.
In practice, few businesses jump straight to a full-time FD. The more common path is fractional support that scales — starting at a day or two a month, growing as the business does, sometimes eventually becoming the bridge to a full-time hire the fractional FD helps recruit and onboard. That's a sensible way to get senior financial leadership at the point you need it, rather than the point you can finally justify a full salary for it.
Not sure which side of that line your business sits on? Take the 2-minute assessment, or get in touch for a free, no-obligation conversation.