How To Become A Finance Services Director: What It Is and Career Path

What is a finance services director and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

To become a Financial Services Manager, you must like finance. You will create financial reports, develop long-term financial goals and budgets, and direct financial staff. You may work in a bank, brokerage firm, risk and insurance department, or credit department as a financial services manager. You are part of a senior executive team and have responsibility for your company's financial health. You will combine both operational and strategic roles, manage accounting and financial control functions and establish financial strategies for profitable growth of the business.

You must be a good communicator, be versatile and talented, and know how to meet the changing roles in your company. You will need a bachelor's degree in finance, accounting, or business administration. If you have a master's degree in business administration, finance, or economics, you can make an average salary of $112,000 per year.

ScoreFinance Services DirectorUS Average

Salary

10.0

Avg. Salary $234,259

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.1

Growth rate 28%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.72%

Asian 7.98%

Black or African American 11.72%

Hispanic or Latino 14.37%

Unknown 4.26%

White 60.94%

Gender

female 44.71%

male 55.29%

Age - 47

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 47

Stress level

7.1

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.8

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.9

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a finance services director

Explore finance services director education requirements

Most common finance services director degrees

Bachelor's

68.1 %

Master's

19.4 %

Associate

8.7 %

Start to develop specific finance services director skills

Skills	Percentages
Financial Services	17.22%
Customer Satisfaction	10.32%
Risk Management	9.94%
Healthcare	4.11%
Customer Service	4.01%

Complete relevant finance services director training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New finance services directors learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a finance services director based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real finance services director resumes.

Research finance services director duties and responsibilities

Lead the PMO for a risk and compliance project for a large mutual insurance company.
Manage satisfactory academic progress monitoring and meet with students for quarterly reinstatement appeals.
Lead implementation of new worldwide consolidation system, Hyperion, significantly reducing closing time and improving controls over the consolidation process.
Implement rules and regulations regarding GAAP, OMB, HIPPA, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Get finance services director experience

Generally, it takes 4-6 years to become a finance services director. The most common roles before becoming a finance services director include controller, finance director team lead and finance manager.

Prepare your finance services director resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your finance services director resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a finance services director resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable finance services director resume templates

Build a professional finance services director resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your finance services director resume.