General
Job Description And Person Specification
Expense Planning Lead - 12-18 Month FTC
Division: Finance - Financial Performance
Reports To: As per Beazley’s organisation chart
Key Relationships: Executive Management, Finance Leadership Team, Platform Management Committees, Finance (incl. Financial Performance team), Chief Underwriting Office, Underwriting Teams, Group Actuarial and Strategic Finance, Support Functions, and other Business Users.
Job Summary: Specialist insurance company Beazley is seeking an Expense Planning Lead to manage how the companies decisions are reflected in the expense base in the current / next year, as well as more medium term horizon, working closely with a wide range of business stakeholders.
Reporting to the Head of Expense Accounting, this role is a strategic and operationally focused role to optimise the way Beazley’s decisions are understood / realised through the expense base and processes around delivering a planned expense ratio. This role involves understanding the current and future requirements of Beazley and ensuring these are adequately provided for in the expense base for a given time horizon. It will also involve helping to define controls and analytics around those processes to explain the result and drive efficiencies across the team.
Leadership Responsibilities
Key Activities & Areas of Responsibility:
- Take on significant leadership and strategic responsibility relating to Expense Accounting team representing finance across various committees, boards and forums.
- Foster a culture that values employee experience, empowerment and wellbeing alongside amplifying the team’s overall capabilities.
- Develop and lead a team with a focus on delivery and governance to provide best in class service. Ensure that all employees have the knowledge and skills necessary to perform effectively in their given roles. You will work with them to ensure effective training and coaching is provided to aid future career progression.
Key Activities
Leading a team of Expense professionals you will be expected to:
Provide Direct Support To Decision Makers
- Build strong relationships with executives and business unit leaders to understand decisions / initiatives and translate this into expense plans. This will require working alongside peers (incl. Lead Finance Business Partner - Expenses) to define the expected outcome from a given planning window.
- Enable rapid interpretation / updates and support via a continuous feedback loop with all stakeholders.
- Effectively communicate to stakeholders by using visuals and story-telling techniques.
- Provide continuous coaching to stakeholders, helping them understand the way Expense Accounting & Financial Performance analyses data and arrives at an insight (GAAP output and expense ratios), allowing them to apply it consistently in their decision-making processes.
- Challenge stakeholders’ assumptions to reduce bias and introduce finance perspective.
- Monitor leading indicators to identify operational performance gaps, drive action or provide alternative approaches.
Provide Financial Insight Across The Expense Accounting Arena
- Working with Expense Accounting teams, lead the development & implementation of a comprehensive expense planning process aligned with Beazley’s overall objectives (GAAP, Platform & YOA).
- Ensure the team contributes expert Expense (planning) insight & commentary as required across key companywide reporting, including but not limited to group reporting, regulatory reporting, expense reporting and productivity metrics.
- Own and deliver the expense planning requirements in concert with the Lead Finance Business Partner (Expenses) ensuring fit for purpose reporting that is right first time & that is of high quality. This should provide insightful MI and Risk & Opportunities amongst other exhibits.
- Support the build out of expense planning reporting - with a view to delivering self-serve reporting via effective dashboards.
- Ensure appropriate inclusion of strategic initiatives within expense plans, in concert with the Lead Finance Business Partner (Expenses).
- Constantly review appropriateness and alignment of Expense Accounting processes in concert with Expense Accounting managers. Update, embed & document changes required.
Facilitate The Creation Of Digital Decision Support Tools
- Utilise new technology to continue to enhance the current global offering, ensuring we create efficiency and globalisation across the Expense Accounting Team.
- Work with the change team to ensure that decision support tools provide actionable advice for a variety of operational and strategic decisions.
- Be the “voice of the internal customer” in meetings with Financial Performance, Technology & Change teams to help design intuitive reports, analysis and dashboards that meet the needs of stakeholders.
- Advocate for -- and assist in developing -- change management strategies to facilitate the adoption of new tools and processes.
- Articulate and demonstrate the value of decision support tool utilisation for stakeholders and tailor the message for different audience types.
- Assist in defining success criteria for Performance Management tools and establishing measurable business and technical metrics to actively monitor utilization and quality.
Core competencies
Requirements
Core competencies in addition to those noted as specific requirements for the role and which are considered to be pertinent to the Expense team are as follows:
- Financial planning and analysis expertise: Expert knowledge of expense actuals; budgeting; and forecasting processes, including the ability to drive continuous improvement in these areas.
- Strategic thinking and business acumen: Deep understanding of revenue drivers, sales optimization, margin management, and metrics cascades to provide insightful, performance inflecting decision support to business leaders.
- Communication and storytelling: Excellent storytelling, communication and presentation skills to effectively convey financial insights, analysis and recommendations to decision makers.
- Advanced technology literacy/proficiency: Ability to exploit digital technologies to drive better outcomes for finance and the business.
- Problem-solving: Ability to challenge assumptions, identify root causes and develop effective solutions.
- Relationship building and collaboration: Proven ability to build strong relationships with business unit leaders and stakeholders. Ability to collaborate with FP&A and technology teams to design intuitive reports, analyses and dashboards
- Continuous improvement: Ability to define success criteria and establish measurable metrics for monitoring tool utilization and quality. Ability to work effectively on a team that uses agile principles to continuously iterate the delivery and development of financial tools and solutions.
- Professionalism: Consistently demonstrates integrity, is highly credible, respectful and trustworthy and represents the expense team in a professional manner. Builds and maintains successful working relationships and is seen to go the extra mile.
- Learning and development: Identifies strengths and weaknesses and seeks to improve performance. Recognises and takes responsibility for mistakes and learns from them. Continually seeks self-development opportunities. Regularly engages in self-assessment and gives/receives feedback to enhance personal awareness.
- Adaptability: Effectively manages changing priorities in a dynamic environment. Seeks training opportunities to understand new working methods. Proves resilient in uncertain and difficult situations and adapts approach/plans/style as required.
- Responsibility and Accountability: Assumes full responsibility for the consequences of own behaviour and decisions. Delivers on commitments to clients demonstrating reliability and dependability. Admits mistakes and takes responsibility for correcting them.
General
It Is Important That Within All Your Interactions Both Internally And Externally You Adhere Beazley’s Core Values - Being Bold, Striving For Better, And Doing The Right Thing. We Also Expect Beazley Employees To
- Comply with Beazley procedures, policies and regulations including the code of conduct
- Undertake training on Beazley policies and procedures as delivered by your line manager, the People & Sustainability (P&S) or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) either directly, via e-learning or the learning management system
- Display business ethics that uphold the interests of all our customers
- Ensure all interactions with customers are focused on delivering a fair outcome, including having the right products for their needs
- Comply with any specific responsibilities necessary for your role as outlined by your line manager, the P&S or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) and ensure you keep up to date with developments in these areas. This may include, amongst others, Beazley’s underwriting control standards, Beazley’s claims control standards, other Beazley standards & customer relationship management
- Carry out additional responsibilities as individually notified, either through your objectives or through the learning management system. These may include membership of any Beazley committees or working groups
Personal Specification
We are a flexible and innovative employer offering a friendly, collaborative, diverse and inclusive working environment. We actively encourage and expect applications from all backgrounds. We empower people to choose where to work given the work they need to do. Collaboration in office spaces is important but we do not mandate a set number of days in the office or from home - you decide what works best for you and the role you are in. Beazley will offer the person a competitive salary and discretionary bonus with a strong benefits package including commuting reimbursement, free in-office lunch, excellent parental leave and financial physical and mental wellbeing contributions among others.
Education And Qualifications
Relevant qualifications and capabilities are listed as follows:
- Experienced qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA)
- Experience of the financial services or insurance market (preferably Lloyd’s)
- Experience of Expense roles within complex insurance organisations and knowledge of accounting policies adopted
Capabilities
- Coaching & leadership skills
- Stakeholder management and relationship building
- Customer focus with strong attention to detail
- Understanding of controls frameworks including documentation
- Experience of a deadline driven environment
- Analytical / Problem solving / Decision making
- Creativity / Innovation
