Senior Finance Assistant

The purpose of this role is to safeguard the financial integrity of the university’s fee income by ensuring accurate billing, robust credit control, and compliance with regulatory standards. Working across the commercial trade debt, student debt, and fee billing teams, the postholder will oversee the integrity of financial data, the setup of annual fee schedules, the timely completion of tuition fee billing, and the effective recovery of student and college fee debt. The role also ensures adherence to anti‑fraud and anti‑money laundering (AML) requirements through due diligence checks, reconciliation of control accounts, and accurate processing of overpayments and refunds, while supporting the administration of external loan schemes. By combining analytical rigor with strong communication and stakeholder engagement, the postholder will promote best practice, mitigate financial risk, and enhance the overall effectiveness of the student finance and credit control functions.

This position primarily focuses on debt recovery, customer service management, stakeholder engagement, and process improvement within the university’s fee and credit control functions.

• Debt Recovery and Reporting: Recover outstanding university fee balances in accordance with institutional policies and procedures, engage with third‑party debt collection agents and solicitors, and produce accurate, professional reports for management outlining recovery status and trends.
• Customer Service Management: Manage high volumes of inbound communications (emails, phone calls) from stakeholders, responding promptly and effectively while meeting service level agreements.
• Proactive Communication: Engage proactively and professionally with individuals and third parties regarding outstanding fee accounts, resolving issues promptly and fostering constructive communication.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Complex Query Resolution: Act as a key contact for high‑level or contentious queries, maintaining strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders and ensuring clear, sensitive communication.
• Analytical and Escalation Handling: Apply strong analytical skills to evaluate processes, identify inefficiencies, challenge suboptimal practices, and resolve complex issues accurately, acting as a key escalation point.
• Team Performance and Objectives: Collaborate with colleagues to achieve individual and team objectives, sharing knowledge and supporting performance targets.
• Billing Operations: Support end‑to‑end tuition fee and trade billing operations, including system upgrade testing, fee matrix configuration, invoice and credit note processing, debt collection, customer account controls, workflow compliance, query resolution, reconciliations, and process improvement.
• Process Improvement: Lead or contribute to short‑term projects that enhance operational efficiency, service delivery, or compliance, owning tasks from initiation to completion and documenting workflows.
• Documentation and Review: Maintain accurate, up‑to‑date documentation of processes and system configurations, ensuring procedures are centrally stored and regularly reviewed.
• Overpayment Processing: Accurately process overpayments in line with policies and AML standards, manage refunds across multiple payment methods, and coordinate external loan scheme administration.
• Compliance Checks on Bank Transfers: Conduct thorough checks on all inbound direct bank transfers, collecting necessary data, completing compliance checks timely, and preventing potential issues.
• Sanctioned Jurisdiction Monitoring: Perform compliance checks on students or payers from sanctioned jurisdictions before releasing payment instructions, ensuring regulatory compliance.
• Reconciliation of Control Accounts: Execute end‑to‑end reconciliation of control accounts for direct and third‑party receipts and refunds, ensuring accurate financial records.
• Fraud Prevention: Conduct cross‑checks of card acquirer reports to detect fraud, investigate high‑risk transactions, and collaborate with departments to strengthen internal controls.

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive; the post holder may be required to perform additional tasks within the scope and grading of the post.