Finance and Operations Transformation Lead

Finance Operations & Transformation Lead

London (Hybrid, 3 days in office)

Are you a Finance Operations or Transformation leader who has redesigned a high-volume finance function, automated the manual work and reshaped the team around a better operating model? Aila Recruitment is exclusively supporting one of the UK's leading residential property management businesses in the search for a Finance Operations & Transformation Lead on a permanent basis.

About the Company:

• A large residential business, well established with a large and growing portfolio
• London HQ with a large head office finance and client accounting function supporting developments nationwide
• A business committing serious investment to modernising its finance operations

The Role:

Reporting to the CFO, you'll take senior leadership of Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Treasury and Credit Control, and lead a significant transformation programme across all four. This is a genuine change mandate: review how the function is structured and run today, design the future operating model, then deliver it.

You'll also act as a senior figure in the finance function and work closely with the Head of Client Accounting, with a permanent remit to embed and continuously improve the model once the heavy lifting is done. It suits a leader who is comfortable making difficult people decisions, challenging established ways of working and taking a team with them through change.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design and delivery of a future Finance Operations operating model across AP, AR, Treasury and Credit Control, including the future organisational structure
• Review existing processes, systems, controls, workloads and team structures, identifying where capacity can be released and cost-to-serve reduced
• Build and deliver a prioritised transformation roadmap, balancing value, risk, cost and customer impact
• Drive automation and AI across manual, high-volume and rules-based activity, including bank statement imports, reconciliations, case allocation and reporting
• Lead a programme to materially reduce unallocated cash, improving payer identification, cash allocation and ownership of residual balances
• Transform Credit Control into a data-led collections operation, with debt segmentation, differentiated arrears strategies and clear KPIs
• Establish a controlled invoice-to-pay model in AP, with supplier statement reconciliations, payment-run discipline and fewer duplicate payments and queries
• Strengthen financial controls, escalation routes and service standards, introducing daily and weekly performance reporting
• Lead, develop and hold to account the existing managers and teams, building a culture of ownership, accountability and continuous improvement

The Ideal Candidate:

• Significant experience leading finance operations or finance transformation in a complex, high-volume environment
• A proven track record of people-led transformation, delivering measurable efficiency and headcount savings, not just process mapping
• Hands-on experience implementing automation and technology within finance
• Strong working knowledge of AP, AR, Treasury and Credit Control, including cash management and debt collection
• A track record of improving financial controls and operational performance using MI
• Strong people leadership, with the resilience to lead teams through significant change and the credibility to challenge established ways of working
• Excellent stakeholder management across Finance, Technology and senior leadership
• Able to operate at both strategic and operational levels, with strong analytical and commercial judgement

What they offer:

• Salary of c.£90,000 - £100,000
• Discretionary Bonus
• Private Medical Insurance
• A senior, high-visibility role with a clear transformation mandate and direct influence over the future shape of the function
• Hybrid working, 3 days a week in the Vauxhall office

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