Finance Risk & Controls Oversight Lead in Birmingham

Job Type: Permanent

Location: Edinburgh / London / Wythall, with normally a minimum of 2 days a week working in the office and the rest working at home. We believe that benefits both you and our business, helping ensure that you can balance a successful career with your life outside of work while maximising the value of face‑to‑face stakeholder engagement.

Flexible working: All of our roles are open to part‑time, job‑share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you and balancing this with business requirements during the recruitment process.

Salary and benefits: £55,000 - £70,000 plus a bonus range of 16%-32%, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more.

Who are we? We want to be the best place that any of our 6,600 colleagues have ever worked. We’re Phoenix Group, we’re a long‑term savings and retirement business. We offer a range of products across our market‑leading brands, Standard Life, SunLife, Phoenix Life and ReAssure. Around 1 in 5 people in the UK has a pension with us. We’re a FTSE 100 organisation that is tackling key issues such as transitioning our portfolio to net zero by 2050, and we’re not done yet.

The role: As a Finance Risk & Controls Lead, you will play a key role in strengthening the risk and control environment across Finance by providing expert support and oversight to accounting/finance‑aligned processes. This includes areas such as financial reporting, expense management, commercial finance activities, and other technical finance processes. You will have a high degree of autonomy and ownership of support and oversight for all financial and non‑financial risks and controls across your assigned area, team and end‑to‑end processes. You will business partner to Heads of and other senior stakeholders across Finance, providing oversight and challenge that risks are managed and controls are appropriate and effective. This is a highly collaborative role requiring technical knowledge of accounting/finance disciplines within a risk and control backdrop, excellent communication skills, and the ability to influence and challenge constructively. You’ll bring a strategic mindset, aligning activities to long‑term risk outcomes and helping Finance deliver on its broader objectives. This is a fantastic opportunity to build your profile, gain exposure to senior stakeholders, and make a tangible impact on how Finance manages risk.

What are we looking for?

• Strong understanding of accounting and finance processes and associated financial/operational risks, ideally gained in a life insurance or financial services environment.
• Experience in audit, risk, or controls roles within a Finance function.
• Ability to work autonomously to understand the risks, assess control effectiveness and identify practical improvements across end‑to‑end processes that span multiple Finance teams.
• Excellent organisation, prioritisation skills, with the ability to manage multiple assignments and deliver high‑quality outputs to tight deadlines.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the confidence to influence, challenge, and build trust at all levels.
• A proactive, problem‑solving approach, with the ability to diagnose issues, think critically, and support the business in finding effective solutions.
• Background in accounting and/or risk, audit disciplines, ideally with a professional qualification or equivalent technical expertise.

We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If your experience looks different from what we’ve advertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role, we’d love to hear from you. If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best. Please note that we reserve the right to remove adverts earlier than the advertised closing date. We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity.