Expenses Business Partner - 9 Month FTC

Beazley; Birmingham; Hybrid; GBP 45,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking an Expenses Business Partner to drive financial insights and strategic guidance. This role is pivotal in bridging finance with various business units, ensuring effective cost management and efficiency improvements. You will lead budgeting cycles, conduct in-depth expense analysis, and present performance insights to senior leadership. Join a flexible and innovative environment that values diverse thinking and encourages collaboration, where your contributions will significantly shape the company's financial future and operational success.

Benefits

Commuting reimbursement

Free in-office lunch

Excellent parental leave

Financial wellbeing contributions

Mental wellbeing contributions

Qualifications

• Experienced qualified accountant with strong analytical skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Become a trusted advisor to business areas for strategic decision-making.
• Deliver effective annual and quarterly plans aligned with business strategy.
• Conduct variance analysis and provide actionable insights for decision-making.

Skills

Curiosity and problem solving skills

Stakeholder Management

Analytical Thinking

Data Analysis & Presenting

Story-Telling

Education

Qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA)

Job description

General

Job Title: Expenses Business Partner - 9 Month FTC

Division: Finance

Key Relationships: Executive Management, Finance Leadership Team, Financial Performance Management, Finance Business Partners, Contribution Partner, Underwriting Function Heads, Underwriting Business Managers, Corporate Development and other Business Users.

Job Summary: Beazley & Finance are on a modernisation journey aimed at improving our systems and processes, allowing us to effectively structure ourselves to meet the requirements of a growing business. This is creating an opportunity to build out our strategic finance business partnering capability.

Are you ready to make a significant impact on our company's financial future?As an Expense Business Partner, you will be at the heart of the strategic decision making process, working closely with business leaders to bridge the gap between finance and various business units. Your mission: to provide cutting edge financial insights, analysis and strategic guidance that will both support the business in their decision making as well as revolutionise our expense management and drive cost efficiency across the organisation.

This is not just a numbers role; it's an opportunity to influence and shape the direction of our business at Beazley.

Key Responsibilities:

• Business Partnering:Become a trusted advisor to business area, bringing financial understanding to given area to enable strategic decision-making.
• Month End: Manage the accurate and timely cost recognition of expenses for business area, providing insightful commentary on performance in line with month end timetable.
• Lead functional reviews: Present performance insights to senior leadership, leveraging standardised MI reporting suite.
• Budgeting & Forecast Cycles:Deliver effective annual and quarterly plans. Ensure that forecast submissions are aligned to the strategy of the business, insights are provided at the necessary level of detail and appropriate alignment with the all stakeholders is in place
• Expense Analysis & Reporting:Dive deep into expense data, conducting variance analysis, uncover trends, and deliver actionable insights that will empower business units to make informed decisions.
• Monthly financial forecasts: Collaborate with respective business area to create accurate and robust monthly expense forecast to anticipate cost pressures vs budget plan and identify opportunities for cost savings
• Risk & Ops: maintain and share monthly risk and opportunity register, that has both business and independent finance view of cost position.
• Cost Optimisation:Be the champion of cost savings and efficiency improvements, leading initiatives that will transform our financial cost base.
• Compliance & Controls:Ensure our financial policies and procedures are rock-solid, maintaining robust internal controls over expense management.
• Year End Activities: Support delivery of year end process, including collaboration on analytics (insights) and audit queries.
• Ad Hoc Projects:Take the lead on special projects and process improvement (PI) initiatives that simplify ways of working and help shape the Expense function of the future.

General

• We are a flexible and innovative employer offering a friendly,collaborative,diverseandinclusive working environment. We actively encourage and expect applications fromall backgrounds. Diverse thinking, enthusiasm and passion drives innovation at Beazley – can you help us to be the best?
• We empower people to choose where to work given the work they need to do. Collaboration in office spaces is important, so we ask that our that colleagues work from our office minimum of 2 days per week, with the remaining days for you to decide what works best for you and the role you are in.
• Beazley will offer the person a competitive salary and discretionary bonus with a strong benefits package including commuting reimbursement, free in-office lunch, excellent parental leave and financial physical and mental wellbeing contributions among others.

It is important that within all your interactions both internally and externally you adhere to Beazley’s core values - Being Bold, Striving for Better, and Doing the Right Thing – as they contribute to an internal environment of teamwork and promote a positive brand image and experience to our external customers. We also expect Beazley employees to:

• Comply with Beazley procedures, policies and regulations including the code of conduct, which incorporates the PRA and FCA Conduct.
• Undertake training on Beazley policies and procedures as delivered by your line manager, the Culture & People or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) either directly, via e-learning or the learning management system.
• Display business ethics that uphold the interests of all our customers.
• Ensure all interactions with customers are focused on delivering a fair outcome, including having the right products for their needs.
• Comply with any specific responsibilities necessary for your role as outlined by your line manager, the Culture & People or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) and ensure you keep up to date with developments in these areas. This may include, amongst others, Beazley’s underwriting control standards, Beazley’s claims control standards, other Beazley standards and customer relationship management.
• Carry out additional responsibilities as individually notified, either through your objectives or through the learning management system. These may include membership of any Beazley committees or working groups.

Personal Specification:

Education & Qualifications

• Experienced qualified accountant (ACA/ACCA/CIMA)

Skills & Abilities

• Curiosity and problem solving skills
• Enjoys asking the what if and why questions
• Story-Telling
• Ability to work collaboratively with cross functional teams

Knowledge & Experience

• Experience of working in complex matrix organisation and adapting through periods of change
• Proven experience in cost control, financial planning, analysis and reporting
• Experience in analysing large & complex data sets and presenting recommendations or & findings visually in a succinct way

Competencies

• Stakeholder Management: Ability to build rapport and manage successful relationships withbusiness and finance stakeholders at all levels
• Analytical Thinking: Logical analytical approach to rapidly changing data and situations. Considers wider implications across functions and varying scenarios to Beazley.
• Data Analysis & Presenting: Ability to analyse data sets and translate into simple story, that is presented an impactful, convincing and succinct way
• Pace & Pro-active: Works with a sense of urgency, is pro-active in planning their deliverables aligned to timetable (setting up review meetings, peer reviews etc) to ensure completion in line with deadlines with high degree of quality.
• Communicating Effectively:Timely communication of new information to relevant parties.Adapts communication style / form as appropriate to the audience and illustrates an understanding of their experience and needs.Conveys complex information clearly and concisely.
• Challenge: Appropriately challenge stakeholders to ensure decisions adequately consider Expense team requirements and are auditable where compromise is needed.
• Strategic Mindset: The ability to look forward and join the dots on the impact of current decisions on longer term outcomes and wider implications across functions and Beazley
• Professionalism: Consistently demonstrates integrity, is highly credible, respectful and trustworthy and represents the expense team in a professional manner.
• Learning and development:Identifies strengths and weaknesses and seeks to improve performance through requesting feedback. Continually seeks self-development opportunities.
• Adaptability:Effectively manages changing priorities in a dynamic environment.Seeks training opportunities to understand new working methods and new technology (Automation, AI, Machine learning etc).Proves resilient in uncertain and difficult situations and adapts approach/plans/style as required.
• Responsibility and Accountability:Assumes full responsibility for the consequences of own behaviour and decisions.Delivers on commitments to clients demonstrating reliability and dependability.Admits mistakes and takes responsibility for correcting them.
• Teamwork:Seeks collaboration as appropriate and shares knowledge/best practise and helps others when they are under pressure.
• Innovative approach:Challenges assumptions and “the way we have always done it”.Embraces change & communicates the benefits of change to others.