Lead Expense Business Partner

Key Relationships

• Executive Management
• Finance Leadership Team
• Platform Management
• Committees (Finance, Chief Underwriting Office, Underwriting Teams, Group Actuarial and strategic finance, Support Functions, Lloyd’s, and other Business Users)

Job Summary

Specialist insurance company Beazley is seeking a Lead Business Partner to manage the company’s expense ratio within its Finance function and work closely with a wide range of business stakeholders. Reporting to the Head of Business Partnering – Performance Management, this strategically focused role involves developing expense management strategies, analysing spending patterns, identifying opportunities for reduction, and working with the Head of Expense Accounting to implement new processes.

Leadership Responsibilities

• Take on significant leadership and strategic responsibility relating to the performance management team representing finance across various committees, boards and forums.
• Foster a culture that values employee experience, empowerment and wellbeing alongside amplifying the team’s overall capabilities.
• Develop and lead a team with a focus on customer service to provide best in class service.
• Ensure that all employees have the knowledge and skills necessary to perform effectively in their given roles.
• Work with them to ensure effective training and coaching is provided to aid future career progression.

Key Activities

Leading a team of Business Partner professionals you will be expected to:

• Build strong relationships with executives and business unit leaders to understand their cost needs and challenges and anticipate the most effective support path, ensuring we are enablers to delivering strategic change.
• Enable rapid improvement in service and support via a continuous feedback loop with all stakeholders.
• Effectively communicate Performance Management perspectives to stakeholders by using visuals and story‑telling techniques.
• Assist in identifying performance issues and provide help in course‑correcting (gap‑to‑goal adjustments).
• Provide continuous coaching to stakeholders, helping them understand the way Performance Management analyse a situation and arrive at an insight, and then apply it consistently in their decision‑making processes.
• Challenge stakeholders’ assumptions to reduce bias and introduce finance perspective.
• Assist with improving stakeholders’ financial data literacy to improve decision makers’ understanding of the financial impact and risks associated with different scenarios.
• Monitor leading indicators to identify initiative delivery risks and operational performance gaps, drive action or provide alternative approaches.

Provide financial insight across the annual and medium term

• Working with Beazley’s strategy teams lead the development and implementation of a comprehensive expense management strategy aligned with Beazley’s overall objectives.
• Working with the Head of Expense Management analyse spending patterns, identify trends, and forecast future expenses.
• Establish metrics and targets for expense control and efficiency.
• Identify and implement cost‑saving measures without compromising quality or service.
• Monitor and analyse spending against budget and identify areas for improvement.
• Own and deliver the expense planning process in concert with the Financial planning team for both the annual and medium term across product, platform and entity including Lloyd’s.
• During the planning process, provide FP&A expertise to ensure stakeholders understand their results and impact on financial performance, identifying potential risks and constraints.
• Ensure the team provides expert review points as requested across key companywide reporting, including but not limited to group reporting, regulatory reporting, expense reporting and productivity metrics.
• Facilitate the creation of digital decision support tools.
• Utilise new technology to continue to enhance the current global offering, ensuring efficiency and globalisation across workstreams.
• 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 Performance Management and technology and change teams to help design intuitive reports, analysis and dashboards that meet the needs of stakeholders.
• Advocate for and assist in developing change management strategies to facilitate the adoption of new tools and processes.
• Articulate and demonstrate 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

The following core competencies are pertinent to the Expense team.

• Financial planning and analysis expertise: Expert knowledge of financial planning, budgeting and forecasting processes, including the ability to drive continuous improvement.
• Strategic thinking and business acumen: Deep understanding of revenue drivers, sales optimisation, margin management and metrics cascades to provide insightful 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 to 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 Culture & People 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 Culture & People or assurance teams and ensure you keep up to date with developments in these areas. This may include, amongst others, Beazley’s underwriting control standards, Beazley’s claims control standards, other Beazley standards and customer relationship management. Carry out additional responsibilities as individually notified, either through your objectives or through the learning management system. These may include membership of any Beazley committees or working groups.

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.

Relevant qualifications and capabilities

Education and Qualifications – Essential Criteria

• Experienced qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA).
• Experience of the insurance market, preferably Lloyd’s.
• Experience of FP&A / business partnering roles within complex insurance organisations and knowledge of accounting policies adopted.

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.