Senior Accountant

• Full responsibility for monitoring and reporting on the health of the balance sheets for all legal entities within the group.
• Accountability for all general ledger reconciliations (policyholder, reinsurance, investments, expenses etc.), providing assurance that all balances are appropriately supported, implementing new methods of monitoring aging of balances and measuring balance sheet risk.
• Accelerate the production of balance sheet reconciliations via data cleanse, automation and use of workflow tooling.
• Review and improve key controls and control evidence relating to balance sheet management.
• Drive the centralisation of reconciliations into a single team, owning the e2e process for centralisation including gathering requirements, designing and implementing solutions, stakeholder management and business readiness.
• Designing and implementing new tooling under the banner of the AFTP programme which will enable automation of reconciliation processes, enhanced oversight of reconciliations completed by outsourcers and new reports which enable the team to effectively manage balance sheet risk.
• Delivery lead for the AFTP implementation, representing the Operational Reporting & Controls Manager and the Head of the Accounting Operations Centre in AFTP project forums. In this role you will ensure that the change teams pay proper regard to the requirements of the business including our RAID and channel communications between the change and BAU teams, escalating for support when needed.
• Ensuring that the AFTP solution design is as simple and cost effective as possible, focusing on standardisation of input data over the creation of multiple, bespoke reconciliation rules.
• Managing a variety of stakeholders (both internal and external) to source, interpret and challenge balance sheet reconciliation data and reporting.
• Design and implementation of new dashboard and reporting outputs that will provide downstream customers and senior stakeholders with insights into the health of the balance sheet and assurance that controls are operating effectively.
• Develop your team such that they become subject matter experts, with an in depth understanding of the group balance sheets, patterns and trends in balance sheet movements and a full understanding of potential balance sheet risk factors to the group.
• Developing your new team to ensure that they have the capability to review and challenge large volumes of balance sheet related data, identify and resolve accounting issues, investigate issues and make recommendations on how to improve the health of the balance sheet and to deliver high quality outputs in short timescales.

Requirements

• In depth knowledge of operational accounting processes and key areas of challenge
• Knowledge and experience of change delivery
• Knowledge of general ledger and source data interrogation
• Detailed understanding of all dimensions in the general ledger and the attributes within them e.g. nominal, entity fund, product, interco etc.
• Detailed understanding of the Standard Life reporting hierarchies
• Knowledge of IFRS, SII and UK GAAP technical accounting and the Group Accounting Manual
• Demonstratable post qualification experience in the financial services industry
• Proven track record of building relationships and effectively managing stakeholders
• Experience of managing BAU in parallel with implementing change
• Experience of managing and developing people
• Ability to analyse financial results, identify key areas of risk and interrogate data to identify and resolve root cause issues
• Report writing experience, demonstrating an ability to produce well written, analytical reports that can be used to support decision making.
• Building new reports supporting the review and analysis of general ledger data.
• Fully qualified accountant

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in operational accounting processes, general ledger management, and balance sheet reconciliation, with a strong focus on stakeholder management and change delivery. Capable of developing teams to enhance their understanding of balance sheet risks and improve reporting outputs.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Operational Accounting Processes
• General Ledger Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Change Delivery
• Financial Reporting

ATS Optimization Keywords Hard Skills

• Balance Sheet Reconciliation
• Data Analysis
• Report Writing
• Financial Results Analysis
• General Ledger Interrogation
• IFRS Knowledge
• SII Knowledge
• UK GAAP Knowledge
• Accounting Issue Resolutione
• Automation of Reconciliation Processes

Soft Skills

• Relationship Building
• Team Development
• Effective Communication
• Problem Solving
• Analytical Thinking

Certifications & Qualifications

• Fully Qualified Accountant

Industry Keywords

• Financial Services
• Group Accounting Manual
• Balance Sheet Risk
• Control Evidence
• Standard Life Reporting Hierarchies

Tools & Technologies

• Workflow Tooling
• Dashboard Reporting
• AFTP Programme Tools