Financial Accountant in Haywards Heath

Collinson is the global, privately-owned company dedicated to helping the world to travel with ease and confidence. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million consumers. Collinson is the operator of Priority Pass, the world’s original and leading airport experiences programme. Travellers can access a network of 1,500+ lounges and travel experiences, including dining, retail, sleep and spa, in over 650 airports in 148 countries, helping to elevate the journey into something special.

We work with the world’s leading payment networks, over 1,400 banks, 90 airlines and 20 hotel groups worldwide. We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception – from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP. Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences.

Key clients include Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, EasyJet, HSBC, Chase, HDFC. Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit, which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work. Never short of ambition, the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 2,200 global colleagues.

Purpose of the job

The Financial Accountant will work within the Insurance finance team of the Collinson Group. They will work as an integral part of the finance team responsible for a range of entities across the Insurance business areas. They will work with the Overheads Finance Manager and Commercial Finance taking ownership for the monthly management accounts, supporting the production of the statutory accounts and act as a key point of contact during the audit process.

The Financial Accountant will be responsible for managing the production of the monthly management accounts and for reviewing the accuracy of the results, support the completion of tax submissions, ownership for the balance sheet reconciliations, cashflow forecasts and line management of the Assistant Financial Accountants. They will also support any process/system changes within the team, ensure the onboarding process for new clients is set up and accounted for correctly as well as ensure a strong and effective control environment exists with a specific emphasis on improving month end close and accounting.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the Overheads Finance Manager and Assistant Financial Accountants within the team to establish and maintain high quality and timely management accounts.
• Day to day team management including objective setting and regular one to one reviews. Help develop and motivate staff by providing them with clear direction to achieve their goals.
• Review of period related P&L trend analysis and analytical reviews for their entity/entities to ensure Group and the business have a good insight into key movements and the financial performance of each entity, highlighting any exceptions to management.
• Maintain the period related balance sheet reconciliation process, ensuring that all aged items are managed and cleared in a timely manner, working with other parts of the business as necessary.
• Maintain a period related balance sheet reconciliation schedule for each entity detailing the balances with supporting evidence, to be reviewed at quarterly BSR meetings (Balance Sheet Review) with the Overheads Finance Manager and Financial Controller.
• Ownership of the inter-company position of all entities under remit, ensuring this is reconciled monthly to agree with the other group entities.
• To work with the Commercial Finance Business Partners to ensure all accruals, prepayments and ad hoc journals are processed with a high level of accuracy and understanding for reporting within the management accounts and provide support on the variance to budget analysis.
• Collaborate with lines of business (Travel, Health and Multilines) around scheme specific arrangements (compensation funds, technology funds) and expected revenue and reflect updates in the management reporting.
• Support the Finance Operations team to ensure all transactions processed are accurate and complete and recorded in a timely manner.
• Support the Overheads Finance Manager on all audits (including but not limited to, internal, 3rd party or year-end), reviewing the year end Group Statutory packs with supporting evidence for balances as required as well as assist with managing audit requests ensuring the evidence for audit samples is sufficient to support the sample requests and performing the walkthroughs with explanations for postings and processes.
• Manage the completion of VAT, Corporation Tax, CASS and any 3rd party reporting as required.
• Preparation of periodic Board packs and other senior level reporting.
• Manage the delivery of the cashflow forecast for their entity/entities.
• Assist with continuous improvements, supporting UAT as required.
• Ensure robust controls are in place and look to enhance where possible.
• Keeping abreast of accounting developments to ensure that the impact of changes are understood.
• Ensuring all process documents are regularly reviewed and updated.

Knowledge, skills and experience required

• Qualified Accountant (ACCA, CIMA, ACA or Equivalent) or qualified by experience.
• Good knowledge of SAP preferable.
• High personal levels of motivation and delivery orientated focus.
• Able to work well under pressure.
• A proactive, forward-looking and challenging mindset.
• Detail focused with strong organisation and planning skills.
• Ability to interact with and develop working relationships internally and externally to achieve best outcomes for the business and customer.
• Experience of leading high performing teams.
• Ability to encourage, train and develop the Assistant Financial Accountants.
• Knowledge and experience of best practice within industry to consistently improve delivery within department.

Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: colour, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, family status, age, individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds, cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our on-going success. We are focused on continually evolving our purpose driven, high performing culture, providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work. Our company values are: Take Action, Do the right thing, One team and Be insight led. These help guide everything we do internally in terms of how we think, act and interact, right through to how we deliver value to our customers and clients.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc). If you need any extra support throughout the interview process, then please email us at ukrecruitment@collinsongroup.com.