Senior Financial Planning and Analysis Manager

Location

Belfast, Northern Ireland, Cardiff, Wales,Edinburgh, Scotland,

Job summary

Do you have a strong financial background, analytical mindset, and great leadership and people skills?

Are you interested in driving great business results and enabling wise investment decisions for Companies House, facilitating meaningful policy outcomes?

If so, we would love to hear from you.

This is an exciting opportunity to join Companies House as a senior leader within our Finance and Commercial Directorate. As a Senior Financial Planning and Analysis (‘FP&A’) Manager, you will oversee and lead analysis to secure our medium to long-term funding and ensure our highest-value investments achieve value for money. In doing so, you will play a critical role in ensuring the organisation can continue to offer brilliant services, achieve our ambitious Transformation and legislative reform agenda, and meet the highest standards for public expenditure.

You will have the opportunity to apply your financial and analytical skills to creative problem-solving every day. You will use modern tools and platforms such as PowerBI and Alteryx to develop and maintain complex financial models and communicate insights to stakeholders. You will have the opportunity to develop your management, mentoring and development skills, with an FP&A Manager reporting to you. You will be part of a dynamic, high-performing, curious and supportive team of circa. 10 FP&A and Economics experts. Collectively, we are Companies House’s centre of excellence on complex financial modelling and medium to long-term forecasting, long-term affordability and funding advice, and value for money. We work closely alongside Finance Business Partners, Technical Accountants, Finance Operations and Commercial experts to offer a cohesive, end-end Finance and Commercial service to the organisation.

Companies House offers a flexible and welcoming culture that promotes a healthy work life balance as well as a proactive approach to wellbeing that allows us to be our best at work. We recognise that people are the key to our success so offer a fantastic benefits package including flexible working with 30 Days Annual Leave, 8 Bank Holidays and 1 Privilege Day as well as enrolment into the Civil Service Pension Scheme with a contribution rate averaging 28%.

Job description

This role is one of two Senior FP&A Managers within Companies House, and one of four FP&A experts in total. The team are collectively responsible for three main analytical outputs:

1. modelling to identify medium and long-term costs of our major investments,
2. long-term costing to inform Spending Review bids, and
3. development and maintenance of our business-critical fee model, which informs the prices of our services.

It is expected that the postholder will lead the modelling on fee values (iii above), and around this, also support on should-cost modelling for major investments, and Spending Review bids.

While this is an analytical role, it is customer-facing, with a significant amount of stakeholder engagement. Specific responsibilities and day to day tasks include:

• Iteration, development and maintenance of our business-critical fees and funding model.
• Leading annual reviews of our fee values to ensure fees are set at the cost-recovery level, in line with Managing Public Money principles. This involves working with, and building strong relationships with Grade 6 and SCS stakeholders across the business, and in other Government Departments and Agencies including DBT, HMT and INSS.
• Direct line management and development of a Band E/SEO FP&A Manager.
• Cost modelling and forecasting for major investments and projects. Recent examples have included a full re-tender and technical modernisation of our customer contact centre contract and implementation of digital identity verification processes for those setting up, running and controlling companies.
• Providing analysis and insight on technical topics including risk quantification and contingency, contract pricing design, modelling assumptions, efficiency quantification and sensitivity testing of model outputs.
• Communicating analysis, findings and insight to internal and external stakeholders of all levels – including Board members – in an accessible way, ensuring the team’s work has impact and drives evidence-based decision making. This includes both oral and written briefing.
• Continuous improvement within the FP&A function and supporting broader organisational development and financial maturity. This is likely to include upskilling on analytical software packages, delivering training across the organisation, and continuously improving our quality assurance and automation processes.

Where you will be working

You will be aligned to either our Cardiff, Belfast or Edinburgh office, where you will be expected to attend on a regular basis. We are currently using a hybrid approach to the way we work which provides opportunities for you to be adaptable in the way you work so that you can achieve a healthy balance between your work and home life. The degree of choice you have will depend on your role and your day-to-day work activities. Your manager will agree regular patterns of attendance with you, however you may be required to make yourself available to attend the office more frequently when required to meet business needs.

Working Hours

This is a full time position of 37 hours per week. For any candidates interested in part time, the minimum hours per week we would be able to accommodate due to the nature of the role and team structure, is 30 hours.

Companies House cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign.

Person specification

The successful candidate must demonstrate the following essential criteria:

• CCAB/CIMA (or equivalent) qualified accountant with evidence of ongoing continuing professional development.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with an ability to explain financial and analytical information to a non-technical audience.
• Substantial financial leadership experience. ‘Leadership’ can refer to either direct line management/leadership of teams, or to leading projects and/or change within organisations.
• Strong grounding in analytical and modelling principles and techniques, including quality assurance, risk analysis, and sensitivity testing.
• Ability to work on own initiative and under pressure with competing demands, to tight deadlines.
• Intermediate to advanced level Microsoft Excel skills.

The successful may demonstrate the following desirable characteristics:

• Experience within the civil service and handling of government budgetary arrangements, including Managing Public Money.
• Knowledge of activity-based costing methodology.
• An understanding of the purpose and development of should cost models.
• Knowledge or experience of options appraisal.
• Experience in a financial planning or financial analyst leadership role specifically.
• Experience using data analytics tools (e.g. Alteryx).
• Experience using data visualisation tools (e.g. Power BI).

Technical Skills

Government Finance Function Strategic Finance Grade 7 technical frameworkwith a particular emphasis on strategic analysis and insight, oral and written presentation skills, data and analysis interpretation, influencing senior leaders and Ministers, and proactive problem resolution.

Qualifications

CCAB/CIMA (or equivalent) qualification (proof will be required for a successful appointment)

Behaviours

We\\\’ll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Delivering at Pace
• Communicating and Influencing

For more information and to apply, please visit our website via the apply button below.