Chief of Staff to the CFO in London

This is your opportunity to join AXIS Capital – a trusted global provider of specialty lines insurance and reinsurance. We stand apart for our outstanding client service, intelligent risk taking and superior risk adjusted returns for our shareholders. We also proudly maintain an entrepreneurial, disciplined and ethical corporate culture. As a member of AXIS, you join a team that is among the best in the industry.

At AXIS, we believe that we are only as strong as our people. We strive to create an inclusive and welcoming culture where employees of all backgrounds and from all walks of life feel comfortable and empowered to be themselves. This means that we bring our whole selves to work. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic, including age, color, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, marital status, national origin, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any basis prohibited by the laws that govern its operations.

About the Team: AXIS Finance plays a central role in enabling enterprise strategy, disciplined capital management, regulatory integrity, and performance insight. As Finance modernizes, the function is strengthening execution across near-term enterprise priorities while building longer-term capability through transformation. This role sits within the CFO organization and partners closely with the CFO and Finance Leadership Team to drive alignment, decision velocity, and delivery across the CFO agenda.

How does this role contribute to our collective success? This role expands the CFO’s capacity by turning priorities into a clear execution plan, tightening decision-making, and ensuring consistent follow-through across the CFO agenda. It improves alignment across Finance and enterprise partners, accelerates delivery of high-impact initiatives, and increases transparency of progress, risks, and trade-offs. Success is measured through improved execution pace, clarity of priorities, stakeholder alignment, and delivery of outcomes across CFO-sponsored priorities (including—but not limited to—Finance transformation). The role acts as a trusted extension of the CFO, ensuring priorities, decisions, and messaging are consistently translated into aligned execution across the organization.

Specifically, the individual will be that which:

• Acts as a constructive challenger to the CFO and Finance Leadership Team by pressure-testing priorities, assumptions, and resource allocation to ensure focus on the highest-value outcomes.
• Drives rigor in prioritization and trade-offs, ensuring that competing initiatives are surfaced, debated, and resolved rather than absorbed or deferred.
• Identifies and escalates misalignment, delivery risk, or execution gaps early, holding stakeholders accountable for clarity, ownership, and outcomes.

What will you do in this role?

• Partnering with the CFO to define, pressure-test, and continuously refine enterprise priorities, translating strategic intent into clear near-term focus and measurable outcomes.
• Running the CFO operating cadence (weekly prioritization, monthly performance/initiative reviews, quarterly strategic resets), ensuring disciplined follow-through and escalation where needed.
• Orchestrating execution across the CFO agenda (e.g., capital strategy and deployment, corporate development readiness, investor/external narrative work, performance priorities, Finance modernization milestones) by aligning stakeholders, clarifying ownership, and tracking delivery.
• Framing complex decisions by synthesizing inputs, evaluating trade-offs and risks, and preparing concise recommendations for the CFO and senior leadership.
• Integrating Finance leaders (e.g., FP&A, Controllership, Treasury, Investor Relations, Corporate Development) and key enterprise partners to remove bottlenecks and accelerate delivery across cross-functional priorities.
• Representing the CFO in select forums to reinforce direction, communicate decisions, and maintain consistent messaging where priorities and decisions have been established.
• Elevating all Executive Committee, Board, and external materials to a consistently high standard—clear, concise, fact-based, and explicitly recommendation-driven—eliminating unnecessary detail and ensuring messages are direct, decision-oriented, and easy to act on.
• Enabling coordination with the Head of Finance Transformation (role to be hired) to ensure modernization efforts are sequenced appropriately, benefits are visible, and delivery aligns to CFO priorities—without duplicating transformation ownership.
• Leading special projects and time-sensitive initiatives on behalf of the CFO that have significant enterprise impact and require senior stakeholder alignment authority.

To increase decision velocity and execution capacity, the role is empowered—through the CFO—to:

• Convene and drive governance forums and operating cadence required to deliver CFO priorities, including cross-functional coordination and issue escalation.
• Request and synthesize inputs from Finance and enterprise teams to frame options, risks, and recommendations for CFO decisions.
• Represent the CFO in meetings where direction has been established, reinforcing priorities and decisions.

Functional ownership and accountability remain with the relevant leaders; the Chief of Staff enables alignment, pace, and transparency across the CFO agenda.

How will success be measured?

• Increased clarity of CFO/Finance priorities with visible, stable execution plans and minimal “initiative churn”.
• Faster decision cycles with better-prepared trade-offs and fewer rework loops.
• Improved on-time delivery of CFO-sponsored initiatives with transparent reporting of milestones, dependencies, and risks.
• Stronger stakeholder alignment across Finance leadership and enterprise partners (reduced friction, clearer ownership).
• Higher-quality executive/Board materials and consistent Finance messaging aligned to the value story.
• Effective integration of Finance Transformation into the CFO agenda (sequenced, unblocked, benefits visible) without duplicating transformation ownership.

About You – What we’re looking for:

• Demonstrate the ability to operate at enterprise level, connecting Finance priorities to business outcomes and value creation.
• Possess strong financial and strategic acumen, including capital allocation, performance drivers, and enterprise trade-offs.
• Demonstrate experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives where success depends on influence rather than formal authority.
• Exhibit executive-level stakeholder management skills, including engagement with senior leadership and Board-level contexts.
• Apply structured problem-solving in ambiguous environments, balancing speed, governance, and quality of decision-making.
• Communicate complex topics clearly and concisely, producing executive-ready written materials and recommendations.
• Operate with high autonomy and sound judgment, effectively prioritising, escalating, and protecting focus for senior leaders.
• Build strong partnerships across functions, using collaboration to drive outcomes and remove barriers.
• Demonstrate resilience and adaptability when managing competing priorities and time-sensitive deliverables.

Role Factors:

In this role, you will typically be required to:

• Participate in Executive activities, as required.
• Engage regularly with senior leadership teams and key enterprise stakeholders across AXIS.
• Operate with a high degree of autonomy in shaping operating cadence, governance, and decision support.
• Work across time zones as needed, with periodic travel where required.
• Maintain a hybrid or in-office presence aligned with senior leadership expectation.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.