Director of Financial Control in London

About Equals

Equals is the next-generation global money movement platform built for exceptional businesses operating across borders. We bring international payments, embedded finance, and more together into a single connection that simplifies operations and strengthens financial control. With deep expertise and integrated infrastructure, Equals turns financial complexity into reliable solutions.

With our headquarters in London and teams around the UK and Europe, you will join a very close-knit, talented and supportive team from various backgrounds who believe that bringing different perspectives together helps us understand our customers' needs. United, by one thing, making money management straightforward and cost-effective for our customers.

About the role

Equals Money is a fast-growing, regulated payments business on a mission to make money movement simple. The Director of Financial Control (EMUK, EMI & PayrNet) holds full financial responsibility for the group's principal regulated trading entities - Equals Money UK Limited, Equals Money International Limited and PayrNet - covering circa £11m of combined annual revenue and in excess of £3bn of client fund turnover.

You will own safeguarding, payment scheme reconciliations, regulatory capital compliance and treasury operations across the EMUK, EMI and PayrNet regulated entities, ensuring compliance with the regulations applying to an authorised payment institution and an e-money issuer.

Reporting to the Group Finance Director, this is a senior, regulatory accountable position for an experienced qualified accountant and leader who is comfortable being the person the regulator, the auditor and the Board all rely on to deliver safeguarding and regulatory capital compliance.

Responsibilities

Entity Financial Leadership

• Hold full responsibility for the safeguarding, reconciliations, regulatory capital and treasury operations, wind-down plans and resolution packs for Equals Money UK Limited - soon to be the group's principal authorised payment institution following the legal entity re-organisation. Act as Safeguarding Officer if required.
• Hold full responsibility for the safeguarding, payment scheme reconciliations, regulatory capital and treasury operations, wind-down plans and resolution packs of Equals Money International Limited, one of the group's e-money issuers. Act as Safeguarding Officer if required.
• Hold full responsibility for the safeguarding, payment scheme reconciliations, regulatory capital and treasury operations, wind-down plans and resolution packs of PayrNet Limited, one of the group's e-money issuers. Act as Safeguarding Officer if required.
• Review legal entity monthly management accounts against budget and forecast that are produced by the Management Accounting Team (P&L, BS and Cashflow), ensuring that they accurately reflect the position of the regulated entities and meet the requirements for regulated entity boards, partner banks and regulatory submissions.
• Review weekly cashflow forecasting for the entities that are produced by the Group Treasurer, to ensure that regulatory capital requirements of the regulated entities are met going forward and the cashflow and liquidity of the regulated entities is being adequately managed to maintain suitable liquidity buffers.
• Attend quarterly board and risk meetings for the regulated entities as the senior finance representative, presenting financial performance against budget and forecast, regulatory capital compliance and safeguarding positions and responding to challenge. Act as a Director of the regulated entities if requested to do so.

Regulatory Capital & Regulatory Reporting

• Own the delivery of the Safeguarding Committee papers and forward agenda.
• Own regulatory reporting for Equals Money UK Limited, Equals Money International Limited and PayrNet Limited, ensuring all returns are accurate, complete and submitted within deadline.
• Ensure capital adequacy is maintained across these entities, applying the three relevant calculation methods (Methods A, B or D) correctly and monitoring headroom on an ongoing basis.
• Forecast regulatory capital requirements forward, flagging emerging pressure early and recommending action to the Group Finance Director and CFO.
• Build the forward capital forecast from the same five-year model FP&A runs and the short-term cashflow forecast that Group Treasury runs, so that capital planning and business planning cannot drift apart.
• Set early-warning thresholds comfortably above the regulatory minimum, with an agreed response at each level, so that pressure is flagged long before it becomes an issue. These thresholds sit alongside the group's financial golden rules as the early indicators that trigger mitigating action.
• Own the entity capital adequacy assessment and wind-down planning, keeping both current and credible rather than an annual document exercise.
• Act as a nominated subject-matter lead for FCA skilled person (s166) reviews, providing evidence, responding to findings and owning delivery of any resulting remediation within Finance.
• Maintain constructive engagement with the Compliance and Risk functions, ensuring finance data supports the entities' regulatory obligations and permissions.
• Own the regulatory capital and safeguarding workstreams on any change of control, legal entity reorganisation or acquisition affecting these entities, including the FCA change in control process and the capital, safeguarding and permissions implications of the resulting structure.

Safeguarding

• Act as owner of the group's safeguarding policy, keeping it current with the FCA's CASS 15 supplementary regime and ensuring it is understood and applied consistently.
• Ensure that client funds are correctly safeguarded across multiple banking partners and multiple currencies for EMUK, EMI and PayrNet.
• Own the internal and external safeguarding reconciliations required under CASS 15 for these entities, ensuring they are performed every business day, that any discrepancy is made good without delay, and that records are retained to the required standard.
• Fund any safeguarding shortfall the same day it is identified, withdraw any excess in a controlled and documented way, and investigate and remediate the root cause afterwards.
• Own the monthly safeguarding regulatory return to the FCA, ensuring it is accurate, complete and submitted within deadline.
• Maintain the safeguarding resolution pack, so that relevant funds could be identified and returned promptly in a wind-down scenario.
• Own third-party due diligence and the acknowledgement letter framework for safeguarding accounts, ensuring letters are in the prescribed form and reviewed on the required cycle.
• Manage the annual safeguarding audit by a qualified auditor, acting as the primary point of contact and owning resolution of any findings.

Reconciliations & Financial Operations

• Own the reconciliations function for the entities in scope, including the reconciliations of PayrNet, ensuring they are complete, timely and reviewed.
• Ensure reconciling items are investigated and cleared promptly, with ageing, root cause and escalation reported transparently.
• Drive automation and process improvement across reconciliations, working with the Head of Finance Projects to reduce manual effort and strengthen control.

Payment Schemes, Treasury & Banking

• Act as the entity's security officer for STGS as a direct participant of Faster Payments via the Bank of England, overseeing annual testing, data submissions and scheme obligations.
• Act as a bank signatory across group accounts, operating confidently across RBS Bankline, Bank of England and Barclays iPortal platforms.
• Work with the central Treasury function on the commercial relationship with the group's banking partners, including pursuit of cost efficiencies.
• Partner with the central Treasury function on liquidity, currency and counterparty exposures for the entities, ensuring they are managed within agreed parameters and that entity-level requirements are properly represented.

Audit, Tax & Governance

• Manage the relationship with the group's external auditors for both the financial statements audit and the safeguarding audit, planning the timetable and holding the process to it.
• Review quarterly VAT returns for the entities for inclusion in the group VAT return.
• Support delivery of the interim audit work carried out in the fourth quarter, the full year audit that follows, and the half-year limited assurance procedures over the June numbers needed to verify distributable reserves and enable cash to be upstreamed.
• Maintain a robust control environment across the entity finance function, working with the Head of Financial Reporting and Chief Internal Auditor on risk assessment, control design and remediation.
• Review and approve the statutory accounts of the regulated entities prepared by the Head of Financial Reporting, ensuring they properly reflect each entity's regulatory position, and take them through the entity boards for approval.
• Keep the entities' financial records in a diligence-ready state, so that three years of monthly figures, safeguarding positions and regulatory capital calculations can be produced for a partner bank, lender, regulator or acquirer at short notice.

Leadership & Transition

• Lead, develop and hold accountable your team, setting clear standards and building depth and resilience.
• Manage the transfer of management accounting activities into the management accounts team over time, as those activities are automated, ensuring a clean and documented handover of process, knowledge and controls with no loss of quality or timeliness during the change.
• Ensure no activity leaves this team until it has been documented, handed over, and is demonstrably running smoothly in its new home.
• Act as a visible senior leader within Finance, contributing to the wider development and improvement of the function beyond your own remit.

Key relationships

Internally, you will work most closely with the Group Finance Director, the CFO and the wider Finance leadership team, alongside your own management team. You will partner with Compliance and Risk on regulatory obligations, with the Head of Management Accounting through the transition of management accounting activity, with the Head of Financial Reporting on statutory accounts, technical accounting positions and the financial risk register, with the Group Treasurer on liquidity, currency and counterparty exposures, and with the Head of Finance Projects on automation and process change. You will also engage with the Chief Internal Auditor and the boards of the regulated entities.

Externally, you will own relationships with the group's external auditors and safeguarding auditors, and with the entities' partner and settlement banks, and - through the Compliance function - the FCA and the payment scheme operators.

Your Profile

Skills & Experience

• Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA or CIMA) with significant post-qualification experience, including time at Financial Controller level or above in a regulated environment.
• Demonstrable ownership of regulatory reporting and regulatory capital for an authorised payment institution, e-money institution or comparable regulated firm, including capital adequacy calculation under multiple methods.
• Deep, practical knowledge of safeguarding requirements - policy, controls, reconciliation and audit - with experience of acting as policy owner or equivalent.
• Working knowledge of the FCA's CASS 15 safeguarding regime, including the daily reconciliation, monthly reporting, resolution pack and annual audit requirements.
• Experience owning a full entity finance function, including management accounts, cashflow, audit and tax compliance.
• Experience managing external audit relationships, including specialist safeguarding audits.
• Experience of responding to regulatory reviews or examinations, such as an FCA skilled person (s166) review, including evidence gathering, responding to findings and delivering remediation.
• Experience of payment scheme participation and banking platform operation; familiarity with Faster Payments and Bank of England settlement arrangements is a strong advantage.
• Proven people leadership, including managing managers and building capability in a team.

Attitude & Behaviours

• Regulatorily minded - you understand that in a regulated entity the answer has to be right, evidenced and defensible, not merely reasonable.
• Calm under scrutiny - comfortable presenting to boards, auditors, skilled persons and regulators.
• Commercially engaged - you understand the business that generates the numbers and contribute to decisions, not just to reporting.
• A developer of people - you set clear standards, delegate properly, and grow the team beneath you.
• Change-capable - you can hold day-to-day accountability steady while leading and absorbing structural change.
• Early-warning minded - you would rather raise a flag that turns out to be nothing than explain afterwards why nobody knew.

Diversity & inclusion

Equals is committed to building a workplace where everyone can be themselves. We actively welcome different perspectives, backgrounds and experiences, and we'll work with you to understand what you need to do your best work. We're an equal opportunities employer and proud of it.

We offer hybrid working across our teams, balancing time in the office - for collaboration, events and the relationships that make work rewarding - with the flexibility to work remotely where roles allow.