Senior Finance Business Partner - 12 Month Fixed Term Contract in London

Role OVO-View

Team: Finance

Location: Bristol or London

Salary banding: £60,000 - £80,000

Experience: Mid-level

Contract Type: Fixed Term Contract

Reporting to: Head of Finance Partnering

Sponsorship: Unfortunately we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

This role in 3 words: Engaging. Ownership. Decision-maker

Top 3 qualities for this role: Communication. Organisation. Resilience

Where you’ll work: Depending on the needs of your business area, we expect hub based people to be in the office at least once a week, and to go to OVO Connection events in-person. This role will be based at either our London or Bristol hub only, however travel between all hubs, Bristol, London and Glasgow will be expected. Each hub has accessible spaces to park your laptop, is designed to inspire people, help them connect and bring big ideas to life.

Everyone belongs at OVO. At OVO, we are on a mission to solve one of humanity's biggest challenges, the climate crisis. And we know it takes all of us to change the world. That's why we need diverse people from all abilities, gender identities, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, life experiences and backgrounds to join us.

Teamworking for the planet. Everything we do here spins around Plan Zero and every role we’re hiring plays their own part in our mission.

This role in a nutshell: You will collaborate with stakeholders, developing compelling insight and presentations that influence stakeholders on the path to value creation. You’ll support with pragmatic problem solving and be seen as a responsible thought leader in finance who is unafraid to challenge the business on course correction. You’ll be forward thinking and be able to anticipate, challenge and plan for changes within financial outlooks. You’ll be self sufficient, make the harder judgement calls and know when to escape. You will understand the competitive landscape and bring a financial lens to strategic decision making & influence, and encourage scalable solutions with focus on long term financial health. If you lead a team, you will enable rapid growth and identify areas for development. You’ll remain responsible but delegate responsibility and foster empowered thinking within a controlled framework / guiding set of principles.

Your key outcomes will be:

• Partnering: Partner with C-suite and LTs (VPs, Directors, HoDs) providing financial insight and challenge into strategic and tactical decisions as well as past business performance. Maintain a monthly cadence for an outlook, integrating a robust view of R&Os to ensure a "no surprises" environment for the LT. Connecting with the Forecast & Planning, People & Procurement teams for full, well rounded reviews. Advising the business on course correction if actual costs stray from budget, including working with the OVO leadership team to devise plans to converge back to budget. Lead the Monthly Business Review (MBR) process, presenting financial performance, outlooks, and strategic recommendations to the C-suite and LT. Support the C-suite and LT in tracking and aligning their financial outlooks against OKRs, ensuring operational delivery remains financially viable. Working collaboratively with senior business leaders to prepare analysis to support and constructively challenge financial decision making. This is both as requested by the business, and also ad hoc where the business partnering team spots potential opportunities.
• Budgeting: Contribute to the financial annual budgeting process, working between the Business and FP&A to ensure robust financial plans are delivered in line with agreed timescales, balancing stretch and credibility. Working with the people partnering team on production and delivery of company wide resource plans. Working with the business through annual medium term strategic outlook processes to develop 3-5 year forecasts, and in particular supporting business leaders to develop industry leading team structures which allow for best-in-class operational leverage. Understands and devises opportunities for cost base improvements, and presents these to the finance leadership team and the OVO leadership team.
• Investment appraisal & cost governance: Owning and managing the investment appraisal process, including business casing, pre-investment appraisal and post-investment reviews. Setting return on investment hurdles and ensuring cost governance over material projects. Maintain governance over incremental spend and investment asks originating from LT, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities.
• Representing the finance team: Representing the finance team in regular conversations with the business and liaising back with the individual specialist areas of the finance team on matters arising around the business. The candidate will update the finance leadership team on a regular basis on matters which they have become aware of and which impact the finance team. Striving to improve the business and our finance processes to allow better insight and more focus on value adding activities.

You’ll be a successful Senior Finance Business Partner here at OVO if you…

• Are a finance professional with experience of solving business issues of similar scale and complexity.
• Possess the ability to interpret and assimilate multiple data sources to provide meaningful insight and appropriate recommendations and clear actions.
• Can effectively communicate financial performance to operational colleagues to embed financial understanding within the business.
• Can influence strategy and translate this into actionable programmes, opportunities or activities that result in improved profitability or risk mitigation.
• Are able to manage multiple complex projects/processes simultaneously.
• Are commercially focused on our ability to make fair returns from our customers.

Let’s talk about what’s in it for you. We’ll pay you between £60,000 and £80,000, depending on your specific skills and experience. We keep our pay ranges broad on purpose to give us, and you, flexibility to match your experience to our zero carbon mission. You’ll be eligible for an on-target bonus of 15%. We have one OVO bonus plan that focuses on the collective performance of our people to deliver our Plan Zero goal. We also offer plenty of green benefits and progressive policies to help you feel like you belong at OVO…and there’s flex pay. We'll give you 9% Flex Pay on top of your salary – 4% of this is auto enrolled into your pension, and the remaining 5% is yours to do what you like with. You can use this to buy from our extensive range of flexible benefits, including our green benefits which we've put at the heart of our offering, add to your pension or even take it as cash.

Here’s a taster of what's on offer:

• For starters, you’ll get 34 days of holiday (including bank holidays).
• For your health: With benefits like a healthcare cash plan or private medical insurance depending on your career level, critical illness cover, life assurance, health assessments, and more.
• For your wellbeing: With gym membership, travel insurance, workplace ISA, will writing services, dental insurance, and more.
• For your lifestyle: With extra holiday buying, discount dining, home & tech loans, and supporting your favourite charities with give-as-you-earn donations.
• For your home: Get up to £400 towards any OVO Energy plan, plus great discounts on solar, smart thermostats and EV chargers.
• For your commute: Nab a great deal on ultra-low emission car leasing, plus our cycle to work scheme and public transport season ticket loans.

Want to hear about our full range of flexible benefits and progressive people policies? Our People Team can tell you everything you need to know.

For your Belonging: To find better ways to support our people, we need to listen to each other’s experiences and find ways to build a truly inclusive and diverse workplace. As part of this, we have 8 Belonging Networks at OVO. Led by our people, for our people - so when you join OVO, you can play a part - big or small - with any of the Networks. It's up to you.