Finance Business Partner

Job Description

We are looking for a commercially-minded Finance Business Partner to lead financial insight and decision support across our central functions and help shape the Group cost strategy. Working with fellow Finance Business Partners, the Cost COE Director and wider finance leadership, the role will provide clear insight, challenge and decision support across our central functions.
The role will partner with Finance, Risk and HR and consolidate the overall cost story for the organisation. It will also lead the cost allocation process, establishing the methodology for allocating costs into products and legal entities, working closely with Financial Control and FP&A to ensure Products and Legal entities are fully costed and reported in a way that reflects underlying profitability.

You’ll spend your time
· Lead financial insight, challenge and decision support across Finance, Risk and HR through analysis of performance, forecasts, cost drivers, risks and opportunities, translating findings into actionable recommendations.
· Acting as a finance lead for central function cost performance, developing a deep understanding of operational activity, resource drivers and organisational priorities.
· Consolidating the Group cost story with other Finance Business Partners, including performance, forecast movements, risks and opportunities.
· Owning and continuously enhancing the Group cost allocation framework, ensuring allocation methodologies remain robust and transparent.
· Ensuring management and legal entity reporting provides a clear view of appropriately loaded costs, profitability and value creation.
· Coordinating central functions cost forecast cycles, governance, assumptions and outputs.
· Supporting business cases, investment proposals and strategic initiatives through robust financial analysis and challenge.
· Developing cost-base understanding to support marginal costing, operating leverage, product pricing and profitability insight.
· Building strong senior stakeholder relationships and influencing decision-making through clear, data based recommendations.
· Ensuring accuracy, consistency and integrity across cost reporting, forecasts, allocation methodologies and management information.
· Improving finance reporting processes, controls and ways of working.

A bit about you

You’ll be analytical, curious and comfortable with challenge, with strong attention to detail and the ability to turn complex information into clear insight. You’ll take accountability, work collaboratively and focus on delivering practical outcomes.

We’d particularly like you to have:
· Strong financial skills, commercial curiosity and flexibility.
· Highly skilled in Microsoft suite, specifically Excel, PowerPoint and CoPilot.
· Excellent analytical and problem solving skills, with the ability to interpret large volumes of data and convert to actionable insight.
· Exceptional attention to detail, alongside the ability to maintain broader strategic perspective.
· Experience in finance business partnering, ideally in a cost environment, with understanding of cost drivers and allocation methodologies.
· Excellent relationship building and stakeholder management skills.
· Strong communication skills, with confidence presenting insight and recommendations to senior stakeholders.
· Confidence influencing and constructively challenging stakeholders at varying levels of seniority.
· Ability to quickly understand business areas, cost drivers and reporting requirements.
· Ability to manage deadlines, priorities and high-quality delivery under pressure.
· Professional accounting qualification (ACA, ACCA, CIMA, ICAS or equivalent) preferred.

A little about us
We are the Nucleus Financial Platforms group and we help make retirement more rewarding. Here at Nucleus, people come first - whether it’s our colleagues, or the advisers and customers we support, we know that working in partnership and collaboration leads to the best outcomes. Together, we’ve shaped the platform to how it is today. We work hard, and we celebrate hard too.
Our ambition is to create a platform with a difference, putting the customer centre stage meant tearing up the rule book and starting from scratch. We’ve come a long way since then, but our mission remains just as focused. That’s why our culture, values, and social responsibility are things we keep at the top of our agenda – because we know they matter and have a big impact.
Our culture is one of the many things that sets us apart from the pack. We want to have an environment where our people feel that they can make a real difference, know they’ll be rewarded for their efforts and more importantly, enjoy themselves at work. Are we a perfect match? Check out this video an

d find out!
Inclusion and diversity at Nucleus
As with most things in life, who cares, wins. We really care about inclusion.
For us it’s not a tick box exercise; inclusion and diversity are embedded in our culture and everything we do. It’s a commercial imperative. It isn’t about being PC. It’s about being future-relevant and durable. We owe it to ourselves and the industry to ensure we are playing our part in creating a fair, balanced and transparent financial services sector.
More diversity means broader experience, a wider set of perspectives and a better collective ability to problem-solve. And it means being more representative of customer groups, which supports areas such as product development.
At Nucleus, we offer a generous blend of benefits for the things that really matter to our people, including a non-contributory pension, bonus, enhanced parental leave, paid time off for emergencies, health and wellbeing initiatives and flexible working options.