About
Ira Levy,
CPA, CA, MBA
Founder and principal of Cipher Financial. A finance executive with more than 20 years of experience, including service as CFO of Canadian public companies.
Deciphering Your Financial Success
Background
Ira Levy is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA, CA) and holds an MBA. Over a career spanning more than two decades, he has held senior finance and executive leadership roles across public and private companies: building finance functions, leading reporting through audits and quarterly cycles, supporting financings and transactions, and sitting at the management table where financial judgement meets business reality.
His experience includes serving as CFO of Reklaim Ltd., a publicly traded data company, and interim CFO of Vertiqal Studios, alongside advisory roles with businesses including Cizzle Brands and Marathon Watch Company. The constants across those roles: IFRS reporting, capital-markets transactions, turnarounds, and building finance functions from the ground up.
Career, selectively
A brief shape of the road here — not a résumé.
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2004
MBA, Schulich School of Business
Graduate business education at York University, Toronto.
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2007
CPA, CA — KPMG
Articled at KPMG, receiving the Chartered Accountant designation in 2007.
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Career
Senior finance and executive roles
More than twenty years across public and private companies: building finance functions, leading reporting through audits and quarterly cycles, and supporting financings and transactions.
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Public markets
CFO, Reklaim Ltd.
Full-time chief financial officer of the publicly traded data company: IFRS reporting, MD&A, audit committee, and continuous disclosure.
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Engagements
Interim CFO and advisory roles
Interim CFO of Vertiqal Studios; advisor to Cizzle Brands and Marathon Watch Company, among other client engagements.
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Governance
Chairman of the Board, Shalom Village
Board chair of Shalom Village Long Term Care in Hamilton, Ontario.
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Present
Founder & Principal, Cipher Financial
Fractional and interim CFO engagements for public companies, going-public candidates, and growth businesses across Canada.
How I work
Personally
Cipher Financial is deliberately a boutique. The person who scopes the work is the person who does it. There is no bench of juniors and no leverage model.
Directly
Straight answers about what a business does and does not need, including "you are not ready for a CFO yet" when that is the honest assessment.
Alongside your people
Engagements are built around management teams, boards, auditors, lawyers, and investors. Existing bookkeepers and accountants usually get better with senior oversight, not displaced by it.
Where the work is
Based in Toronto, in person across the Greater Toronto Area, and remote across Canada — including international companies reporting under IFRS.
A personal note
“Cipher Financial started inside a public company. I was the full-time CFO of a small issuer, and the math was hard to ignore: the company needed senior financial leadership, but not forty hours of it a week. Its capital was better spent on the accounting team doing the daily work than on a full-time executive salary. So the role became fractional, and Cipher Financial grew out of that arrangement. The work I'm most useful at has stayed consistent since: turnarounds, first-time finance functions, RTOs, and the stretches where a company needs judgement more than headcount.”
— Ira Levy
Where he focuses
- Public companies and companies preparing to go public
- Venture-backed and high-growth private companies
- Owner-managed businesses and startups, roughly $1M–$20M in revenue
- International companies reporting under IFRS or needing Canadian public-company expertise
Talk to Ira about
your finance function
A direct conversation with the person who would do the work, not a business-development call.