Finance Expense Analyst - 12 Month FTC

Key Relationships: Finance (incl. Financial Performance team), Accounts Payable, BSS Business Function Heads, BSS Business Managers and other Business Users.

Job Summary: Specialist insurance company Beazley is seeking an Expense Analyst to support the accurate and timely delivery of the Beazley Shared Services (BSS) expense actuals & planning processes. This is mainly centred around month end processes and landing a month end position (with ledger entries), reconciliations & variance analysis and analytics reporting. Reporting to the Expense Business Partner, this hands‑on role is responsible for processing, analysing, and reporting on BSS expenses. This includes data entry, running reports and preparing presentations using Finance systems (Workday Financials / Adaptive Planning). This role is ideal for someone with strong attention to detail, analytical skills, and a desire to develop within a finance function.

Key Activities & Areas of Responsibility:

• Provide direct support to decision makers: Support the delivery of the Expense Actuals process in accordance with pre‑approved timetables. This will include all month end ledger entries (for all processes owned), support Purchase Order compliance and uptake, variance analysis with robust and detailed commentary, running analytical processes & embedding the controls and governance framework.
• Support the delivery of the Expense planning process in accordance with pre‑approved timetables. This will include understanding BSS requirements (both current and future) and ensuring these are robustly challenged. All submissions should be fully understood to help drive the actuals process on a monthly basis and future planning discussions.
• Continuously strive to develop reporting capabilities and dashboards for process efficiency and reporting effectiveness.
• 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.
• Ensure appropriate control framework is in place to ensure accuracy of reporting.
• Ownership, and development, of the process documentation framework in place for responsibilities and to ensure the completeness and validity of these in line with governance requirements.

Facilitate the creation of digital decision support tools:

• Utilise new technology to continue to enhance the current BSS offering, ensuring solutions can be scaled to create efficiency 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.
• Assist in developing change management strategies to facilitate the adoption of new tools and processes.
• Assist in articulating and demonstrating 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 utilisation and quality.

Core competencies:

• 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 utilisation 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.
• Carry out additional responsibilities as individually notified, either through your objectives or through the learning management system.

Essential Criteria:

• 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

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: Experienced qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA)

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.