Senior Finance Assistant (Maternity Cover) – Strand, London, WC2R 2LS

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 is a full time Maternity Cover until 15‑Aug‑2027.

Key Responsibilities

• Debt Recovery and Reporting: The role is responsible for the recovery of outstanding university fee balances in accordance with institutional policies and procedures. This includes monitoring overdue accounts, engaging with relevant parties to secure payment including 3rd party debt collection agents and solicitors, and taking appropriate action to recover unpaid amounts. The role also involves producing accurate and professional reports for management with excellent attention to detail, outlining the status of recovery efforts and identifying any notable issues or trends affecting university fee collection.
• Customer Service Management: A core component of this role is overseeing high volumes of inbound communications, including emails and phone calls, from a range of stakeholders regarding university fee matters. The postholder is expected to manage and respond to these inquiries promptly and effectively, ensuring compliance with service level agreements (SLAs) and maintaining a consistently high standard of customer service and satisfaction.
• Proactive Communication: This role requires a proactive and professional approach to engaging with individuals and third parties regarding outstanding university fee accounts. The focus is on resolving issues promptly and effectively, while maintaining clear, courteous, and constructive communication to support positive relationships and encourage timely resolution of balances.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Complex Query Resolution: This role acts as a key contact for resolving high‑level or contentious queries that require careful handling and professional judgement. The postholder will maintain strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders, offering timely, well‑informed responses and facilitating productive dialogue to achieve resolution.
• Analytical and Escalation Handling: This role demands strong analytical abilities and meticulous attention to detail in evaluating processes, identifying inefficiencies, and constructively challenging suboptimal practices. Precision is essential when reviewing complex data, interpreting policies, and assessing the implications of decisions.
• Team Performance and Objectives: Collaboration with colleagues is key to achieving both individual and team objectives. The role involves contributing to shared goals by exchanging knowledge, providing support across tasks, and actively participating in the delivery of performance targets established by supervisory leadership.
• Billing Operations: Help the end‑to‑end tuition fee and trade billing operations, including system upgrade testing, SITS fee matrix configuration, invoice and credit note processing, debt collection, customer account controls, workflow compliance, query resolution, reconciliations, process improvement, and maintenance of accurate financial documentation and controls in line with college policy and regulatory requirements.
• Process Improvement: Lead or actively contribute to short‑term projects aimed at improving operational efficiency, service delivery, or compliance within the credit control function. Take ownership of specific tasks, managing them independently from initiation to completion.
• Documentation and Review: Maintaining accurate and up‑to‑date documentation of processes and system configurations is a key aspect of the role. This ensures procedures are clearly recorded, centrally stored, and regularly reviewed to reflect operational changes.
• Overpayment Processing: The role includes managing the accurate processing of overpayments in line with institutional policies and regulatory requirements, including anti‑fraud and anti‑money laundering standards.
• Compliance Checks on Bank Transfers: The role holder will routinely undertake thorough checks on all inbound direct bank transfers to King’s, as well as any additional wider encompassing checks and controls on payment pathways and customer bases under the universities compliance umbrella.
• Sanctioned Jurisdiction Monitoring: Perform compliance checks on students or payers from sanctioned jurisdictions before releasing payment instructions and/or allocating the payments to the invoice.
• Reconciliation of Control Accounts: Handle the end‑to‑end reconciliation of control accounts related to both direct and third‑party college inbound receipts and refunds.
• Fraud Prevention: Regularly conduct thorough cross‑checks of card acquirer reports to detect fraudulent activity and prevent financial loss.

About you:

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

• Educational Qualifications: Candidates should possess a minimum of a degree qualification or an equivalent financial certification, such as those offered by the Chartered Institute of Credit Management (CICM), Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT), Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), or demonstrate equivalent experience in the financial field.
• Understanding of Anti‑Fraud Compliance and Legislation: Ability to demonstrate a thorough knowledge of anti‑fraud compliance regulations, such as those related to Money Laundering and the Proceeds of Crime Act, is essential.
• Advanced IT and Numeracy Skills: High numeracy skills and proficiency in IT are required, particularly in using Microsoft Office software.
• Accountancy Knowledge: A solid working knowledge of accountancy functions and procedures is crucial.
• Professionalism and Attention to Detail: The role requires a highly professional approach to work, with exceptional attention to detail and accuracy.
• Independent Work and Communication: Ability to work with minimal supervision is vital.
• Experience with Compliance and AML Checks: Prior experience in performing compliance and Anti‑Money Laundering (AML) checks on inbound payments or new customers is required.

Desirable criteria

• Knowledge of administrative and accounting functions and processes within a Higher Education environment.
• Knowledge of SITS/SAM Student Records and Unit 4 ERP (formerly called Agresso or Business World).

Equality and Diversity Statement: The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.