Finance Business Partner

CLYDE UK SERVICES COMPANY; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 55,000; Full time

Job summary

A prestigious global law firm seeks a Finance Business Partner for its Manchester office. This key role involves financial planning and analysis to support strategic decision-making, with responsibilities spanning performance management and commercial insight. Candidates must be ACCA/ACA/CIMA qualified with significant experience and excellent communication skills.

Qualifications

• ACCA/ACA/CIMA qualified with minimum 5 years PQE.
• Extensive Finance Business Partnering experience with senior stakeholders.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead preparation of annual budget, providing insights for assumptions.
• Communicate month end and forecast analysis.
• Serve as financial link between practice and finance team.

Skills

Communication

Analytical skills

Stakeholder management

Resilience

Continuous improvement mentality

Collaboration

Education

ACCA/ACA/CIMA qualification

Tools

MS product suite

Job description

Department: Casualty

Location: Manchester

Role: Finance Business Partner

The Firm

Clyde & Co is a global law firm with 400 partners, 2000 legal professionals and 3600 staff in over 40 offices across six continents. Its core global sectors position it at the heart of global trade and commerce: insurance; marine, natural resources and energy; projects and construction; aviation. Our vision is to be our clients first choice for complex, multi-jurisdictional matters in our chosen sectors by investing in our core practice areas in chosen locations, serving an international client base and build a network of offices in key trading zones. Our key focus is also to become the "go to" firm in emerging markets, running ourselves professionally by attracting and developing the best people.

The Role

Clyde & Co is seeking a Finance Business Partner to join our Casualty team in Manchester. In this role you will work with the team to enable the department to achieve its objectives, make decisions and plan appropriately through the effective understanding and use of financial analysis.

Key Responsibilities

Financial Planning and Analysis:

• Lead the preparation of the annual budget for the department providing insight for key commercial assumptions, liaising with BD and COO's to ensure buy in on key dependencies, and ensuring accuracy of baseline budgets
• Interpret and communicate month end and forecast analysis for the department
• Provide regular performance forecast to give visibility to COO's and FP&A team, highlighting risks and opportunities and agreeing actions to mitigate and deliver
• Challenge business assumptions in forecasting and planning, using analysis and post-implementation review learnings

Performance Management and Communication:

• End to end ownership of group P&Ls, driving quality of insightful commentary, and commercial challenge
• Advanced ad-hoc analysis to help maximise profitability across the group particularly looking at partner and client portfolios and key performance drivers: realisation, utilisation, staffing ratios and working capital.
• Review and analysis of actual performance, interpret results drawing conclusions and making recommendations for future actions
• Where gaps to target appear proactively engage with the department at the earliest opportunity to develop and implement appropriate recovery plans

Business Support :

• Serving as the financial link between practice(s) and the finance team.
• Provide insight and recommendations to deliver income growth or identify potential efficiency benefits through improving processes.
• Providing financial mentoring and training to newly promoted partners / laterals / promotion candidates / new firm joiners.
• Providing financial support to ensure strategic business development, client retention and increased client profitability within the practice group(s).
• In conjunction with the working capital team, keep abreast of any issues and act as an escalation point to resolve issues with internal/external stakeholders
• Being able to articulate any budget risks of any significant working capital issues.
• Providing input to delivery of effective people management processes and strategies, including capability development, talent management, succession planning and workforce planning.
• Ensuring financial models and processes are critically reviewed on a regular basis for continuous improvement.
• Scenario modelling and business case preparation for business initiatives to aid decision making and maximise business performance e.g lateral partner recruitment
• Understanding operational dependencies for delivery on financial performance targets and ensuring these are monitored to mitigate financial risk and deliver financial performance.

Commercial Support:

• Work with department aligned BD managers on client bids and proposals where finance-enabled pricing and commercial support can add value.
• Supporting the BD team in client / key client reviews.
• Driving a proactive review of pricing to enable Partners to present requests for mid-contract price increases
• Ad-hoc analysis and reporting to support BD and partners in maintaining and developing existing client relationships. 2 Error! Unknown document property name.

Key stakeholders :

• Department executive/management team (incl designated finance partner)
• COO
• Global Head of FP&A
• Partners
• HR Business Partners
• Business development team
• Working capital team

Essential Skills and Experience

• ACCA/ ACA/CIMA qualified with a minimum of 5 years PQE
• Extensive Finance Business Partnering experience with senior stakeholders [within a professional services business]
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Strength of personality to ensure the perspective of 'Finance' is clearly communicated.
• Resilient, with the ability to remain calm and focussed under pressure.
• Excellent soft skills including the ability to influence or challenge senior stakeholders when necessary
• A continuous improvement mentality to support development of self, colleagues and business processes and interactions
• An ability to be able to focus on the detail during business planning processes as well as understand the bigger picture when supporting fast moving strategic decision support.
• A collaborative team-player who is transparent and has a straight forward approach
• Proficiency using MS product suite (with particularly focus on analysis and reporting tools)

Business Services Competencies

Clyde & Co is committed to providing extensive, personal and professional development opportunities for our people enabling them to be highly effective in their current role as well as assisting them to fulfil their career aspirations.

The competencies are used to inform all aspects of Business Services career development. They vary across levels and different business areas and fall under the following areas:

• Technical Excellence
• People and Team
• Client/Stakeholder Relationships
• Service Delivery and Commercial Awareness
• Personal Effectiveness

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