Job Description

This role manages Finance’s accounting team in the UK, and oversees the financial accounting, ensuring it is completed correctly and in a timely manner, and numbers are reported accurately. The role is responsible for UK financial compliance activities at month-end and year-end close across the UK.

This is a key role and will drive significant organizational change in the way in which the UK carries out its transactional finance, monthly close process and financial compliance. The post holder will be required to organize the various teams to ensure consistent standards of performance and accuracy across the UK whilst maintaining strong and efficient interaction with the Shared Service Centres in India and Poland.

The post holder must be comfortable challenging senior stakeholders in order to ensure consistent, accurate and robust monthly results for the UK whilst complying with financial accounting processes and in line with group accounting practices and corporate policies. He/she must also demonstrate an understanding of the organization’s aims and can connect and influence finance and operational colleagues within the UK and overseas.

The post holder will be expected to continuously review transactional finance roles across the UK, to ensure that new ways of working are communicated, trialled, and implemented. This includes moving transactional activity to the Shared Service Centre and working with the Shared Service Centre to successfully embed the processes and identify appropriate service levels and KPIs.

The post holder will aim at improving communication across operational areas and with the Shared Service Centre, and will work closely with other finance teams across month-end to ensure an accurate set of both financial accounts and management accounts for the UK, and embed good cash management practices.

The post-holder will:

• Work alongside the transformation team to centralize and move activity.
• Manage and enhance monthly and year end close processes to improve the quality of the UK’s close whilst also speeding the production accounting reports.
• Be the main point of contact for coordinating initiatives involving the shared service Centre’s, Strategic Business Units, corporate departments, global IT services and the UK Region.
• Ensure that the UK trial balance, especially its balance sheet accounts are analyzed and validated / reconciled monthly with a minimum of individual reconciling items and reflect an accurate and true valuation of assets and liabilities in accordance with policy.
• Drive and ensure implementation of the financial procedures, policies and systems necessary to meet the organization’s global reporting.
• Play a key role on the Cash Committee in managing UK payment runs and debt management processes, and by extension, influencing these processes across the global network
• Develop Cash flow forecasting and management and liaise with the central Treasury team.
• Implement and report on the progress of audit recommendations.
• Identify and challenge issues and bring resolution in relation to financial accounting matters.
• Provide an advisory function to operations on technical accounting issues and liaise with other specialist finance functions such as Tax, Treasury and Group Statutory Reporting as needed.
• Devise and implement key performance indicators for controls and compliance across the UK, reporting on them and leading initiatives for further improvements
• Identify process improvement opportunities to support the delivery of strategic objectives by engaging non-finance teams and their respective leads and ensure effective implementation.
• Oversee the control and financial management of the Council’s UK Fixed Assets.
• Manage the provision of information to internal / external auditors.
• Produce periodic reports relating to financial accounting.

In addition to a competitive salary and excellent pension contributions, the British Council offers:

• 32 days annual leave and an additional half day on Christmas Eve
• Employee Assistance Programme

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• CIMA, ACCA, ACA or CFA designation with considerable experience post-qualification is a must
• A significant number of active years of financial controllership and related experience.
• Proven ability to manage teams
• Strong interpersonal skills and negotiating experience
• Experience of working in a large and diverse organization
• SAP/ERP experience is highly desirable