Finance Operations Team Manager

About Servaada, a Wipro company: Servaada is Wipro's UK entity, authorised by the FCA (the UK financial services regulator) to undertake regulated activities on behalf of its clients, as an outsourced service provider.

Job Purpose: To contribute to the delivery of accurate and complete financial outcomes for policyholder accounting records on behalf of Servaada commercial customers, support responses to technical queries raised by internal and external stakeholders and to manage and develop a team of analysts and assistant accountants against Servaada HR policies and agreed personal goals.

Key Essential Skills, Knowledge / Experience and Qualification Requirements

• Skills: Communicates effectively, including written and oral presentation, engaging customers and stakeholders as appropriate to role. Demonstrates good organisational skills, with an analytical and methodical approach to work. Ability to work very well in a team, consulting and co-ordinating others appropriately in the wider function and business. Strong analytical skills – making use of SQL to extract data from multiple Alpha tables for analysis purposes. Demonstrates appropriate prioritisation skills. Ability to apply specialist knowledge to improve processes. Computer literate and competent with all required operating systems and Microsoft Office products.
• Knowledge: Understands the commercial environment. Understands requirements of an accurate General Ledger and its dependency on the policy transaction system as well as manual ledger journals. Knowledge of Life and Pensions financial and regulatory environment (not essential).
• Experience: At least 5 years’ experience in a finance department (or relevant qualification). Experience of working within a regulatory environment. Experience in implementation of new financial systems and/or processes. Experience of system interrogation.
• Qualifications (desirable not essential): A qualified or in training member of a CCAB body or equivalent qualification (or relevant experience).

Competencies: People management of a team of direct reports, ensuring adherence to HR policies, and providing feedback on performance against agreed goals. Ensure task allocation across the team is appropriate, making recommendations of re-allocation based on capacity, skillset and development, while ensuring plans are in place for unexpected absences. Ensure departmental deliverables are produced accurately, timely and of requisite quality through appropriate co-ordination and planning of resources, and sign-off of team deliverables and controls, including balance sheet reconciliations. Application of commercial and financial knowledge to drive results and quality improvements. Understand the Risk and Control framework that Servaada operates applying finance knowledge and challenge to ensure tactical risks are identified, measured against standards, and escalated appropriately. Tactically design and support the smooth running of financial processes, models and systems (e.g. general ledger, forecasting tool and group submission tool). Challenge and initiate improvements in efficiency and quality to achieve desired outputs. Application of specialist knowledge to resolve queries or short-term challenges, through engagement with stakeholders (including external clients), responding to issues to a satisfactory completion considering a customer-based approach. Drive continuous end-to-end improvement to ensure both financial accuracy and correct policyholder outcome. Articulate financial information to non-financial individuals across all levels of the organisation.

The Operating Environment And Context Of The Job: The goal of the policyholder accounts team is to ensure the financial reporting outcomes of policyholder activity, primarily premium receipts and claim payments, are accurate for onward regulatory and non-regulatory reporting. Most of the accounting is generated through the administration systems, but general ledger adjustments are required where the system cannot complete this. This role requires an understanding of the team’s deliverables to help manage accurate and complete outcomes, as well as development of the analyst and assistant accountant population.

Equal Opportunities: Servaada is an advocate for positive change and conscious inclusion. As a global employer, we strive to create a diverse Wipro family by remaining committed to the development of our culture, diversity, equality, and inclusion in the workplace. All applicants welcome.