What to Do If Your Financial Director Goes on Maternity Leave

When your finance director tells you they are expecting, the news is worth celebrating — and it also starts a planning clock. For most businesses the FD is the one person who holds the numbers together: the monthly management accounts, the cash flow, the bank relationship, the payroll sign-off, the board pack. Losing that capability for six months to a year is not something you can absorb by spreading the work across the team and hoping. This guide walks you through what to plan for, when to act, what the law requires of you, and the practical options for keeping the finance function running while your FD is away. Recruiting an interim FD to cover a maternity leave is one of the things we do most often at FD Capital, so much of what follows comes from how these covers actually play out.

Start planning early — the timing that matters

The single most useful thing you can do is start early. In the UK an employee normally has to tell you they are pregnant, and roughly when they intend to start their leave, by the fifteenth week before the baby is due — around six months in. In practice many FDs will tell you sooner, especially if they are senior and conscious of the handover involved. That gives you a runway, and you should use it. A good maternity cover is not recruited in the last fortnight; it is recruited with enough overlap that the incoming interim and the departing FD can sit together, walk through the reporting cycle, meet the bank and the auditors, and transfer the dozens of small pieces of context that never make it into a handover note.

A realistic timetable looks like this. As soon as you know the rough leave date, agree the shape of the cover with your FD. Two to three months out, begin the search. Aim to have someone appointed with three to four weeks of overlap before the leave begins, so the handover is done while your FD is still in the building rather than fielding questions by phone from home. The earlier you start, the wider the pool of good interim FDs available to you — the best ones get booked.

Know where you stand legally

Maternity leave in the UK is a statutory right, and getting the basics right protects both your employee and your business. Eligible employees are entitled to up to fifty-two weeks of leave — twenty-six weeks of ordinary maternity leave followed by twenty-six weeks of additional maternity leave — and there is a compulsory two-week period immediately after the birth when they cannot work at all. Your FD does not have to take the full year, but they are entitled to, and you should plan on the basis that they might.

A few points catch employers out. You cannot ask an employee whether they intend to come back — they are under no obligation to tell you, and pressing the question can land you in difficulty. An employee on maternity leave has the right to return to the same job on the same terms if they return within the first twenty-six weeks, and to a similar role if they take longer. They can also work up to ten keeping-in-touch (KIT) days during their leave without bringing it to an end — genuinely useful for a finance role, as it lets your FD dial in for year-end, an audit visit or a board meeting if they choose to. And on their return they have the right to request flexible working, which for a finance director often means a phased return, a four-day week for a period, or a job-share. None of this is a reason for anxiety; it simply means the cover you arrange should be flexible enough to flex around how your FD actually returns.

Your options for covering the gap

There is no single right answer — the best cover depends on the size of your finance team, how hands-on the role is, and your budget. The main routes are these.

An interim finance director

For most businesses this is the natural answer. An interim finance director is an experienced FD who steps in for a defined period, picks up the full role, and hands it back cleanly when your permanent FD returns. Because interims do this for a living, they are used to walking into an unfamiliar business and being productive within days rather than months, which is exactly what a maternity cover needs. They can run the full remit — management accounts, cash flow, board reporting, the bank and audit relationships — and they carry no expectation of a permanent seat, so there is no awkwardness when your FD comes back.

A fractional or part-time FD

If your FD’s role does not genuinely need five days a week — and in a smaller business it often does not — a fractional FD or part-time FD covering two or three days can be a more cost-effective fit. This works particularly well where you have a capable financial controller or management accountant who can carry the day-to-day, and you need senior oversight, board-level reporting and the bank relationship covered rather than a full-time pair of hands. It also lets you flex the days up around pinch points such as year-end and back down in quieter months.

A fixed-term-contract FD

Some businesses prefer to bring the cover on as an employee on a fixed-term contract for the duration of the leave, rather than engaging an interim on a day rate. An FTC can suit a longer cover — a full year rather than a few months — and where you want the person embedded in the team on payroll rather than operating as an external contractor. The trade-off is speed and flexibility: an FTC hire takes longer to recruit and is harder to extend or end early than an interim engagement, and you take on employer obligations for the term. For a predictable, full-length maternity cover it can be the right call; for anything uncertain in length, an interim is usually more adaptable.

Blending the options

In practice the best covers are often a blend. You might bring in an interim FD full-time for the first two months to stabilise things and get through year-end, then step down to a fractional arrangement once the controller has found their feet. Or run a part-time FD alongside your existing team throughout. The point of using a specialist recruiter is that you are not locked into one model — you can shape the cover around what the business actually needs month by month, and reshape it when your FD’s return plans firm up.

Involve your departing FD in the hire

Wherever you can, bring your finance director into the process of arranging their own cover. Nobody understands the role better, and nobody has more of a stake in it being handed back in good order. Write the brief together — the real one, not the job description that was written when they were hired three years ago. Let them meet the shortlist if they want to; a cover they have helped choose is one they will hand over to willingly, and return to smoothly. It also sends the right signal: that you are planning for their return, not managing around their absence.

How FD Capital helps

Maternity cover is one of our specialisms. We hold a network of experienced interim, fractional and part-time finance directors, many of whom have spare capacity and can start at short notice — which matters when a leave date is fixed and moving. We take the time to understand the role as it really operates in your business, not just the title, and we match on the specifics: your sector, your systems, the size and shape of your finance team, and whether you need full-time cover or senior oversight two days a week. And because we place these covers regularly, we can help you think through the shape of the engagement — interim versus FTC, full-time versus fractional, how to build in flexibility for your FD’s return — before you commit to it. When your FD comes back, the interim hands over and steps away, and you are back to normal with the show having stayed on the road throughout.

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Adrian Lawrence

Adrian Lawrence FCA is the founder of FD Capital and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). He holds a BSc from Queen Mary College, University of London, and has over 25 years of experience as a Chartered Accountant and finance leader working with private, PE-backed and owner-managed businesses across the UK. He founded FD Capital to connect growing businesses with the Finance Directors and CFOs they need to scale — and personally interviews candidates for senior finance appointments.