Manager - Cost Centre of Excellence

Department -

Level 5

Were proud to have been helping our clients build better financial futures for over 50 years. How have we achieved this? By working together - and supporting each other - all over the world. So, join our team and feel like youre part of something bigger.

Purpose of your role

The Cost CoE team was formed in late 2022 to address the complexity & drivers around cost, create a scalable operating model, and deliver services that drive business performance and ensure regulatory compliance. To progress on the vision of building cost CoE, the primary responsibility of this role would be enhancing the transparency and quality of costs & related datasets. The candidate will be responsible to support drive strategic programmes and develop implementation plans by coordinating with leaders across Controllership and Business finance. The candidate will also contribute to creation and implementation of best practices, cost estimation vision, strategy, policies, processes, and procedures to aid and improve both strategic partnerships and operational aspects.

Key Responsibilities

• Responsible for record to report sub-activites including cost accounting,MoM variance analysis and reconciliations for month-end reporting
• Create engaging and informative monthly and ad-hoc analysis, analyzing movements with the Cost Head from both a Controlling and Business Finance perspective
• Support month end process by investigating variance with budget/forecast and provide thoughtful actions and comments to drive business decisions
• Liase with controllers, business finance teams and business stakeholders to design the future operating structure including roles and responsibilities, governance model etc
• Complete analysis of system hierarchies and linkages with different systems which would help eliminate manual processes
• Work with the change team to update on key milestones, flag off key delays / bottlenecks, developing test and implementation plans
• Propose solutions to solve strategic, tactical, structured, and unstructured business problems, e.g., cost transparency, cost optimisation
• Focused on designing communication strategy, understating change impact, developing training modules and facilitating change adoption programs
• Evaluating the change impact and organizational readiness to limit potential risk and ensure smooth execution of the business
• Build global collaborations, developing solutions to reduce redundancies & increase efficiencies through automation, digitisation etc
• Ensure ongoing governance with the internal teams and business to identify opportunities and solve issues

Experience and Qualifications

• At least 6-8 years overall experience preferably in Financial Services industry
• CA/MBA/MCA/Any other bachelors degree
• Understand cost accounting and its downstream impact on Controllership and Business Finance
• Are curious, with strong attention to detail and a love for diving into issues in depth
• Have sound analytical skills and strong knowledge of accounting principles
• Comfortable in working with people and teams across the business to develop, share, accept and implement new ideas
• Relevant experience in Finance modelling/ driving transformation initiatives / setting up capability centres.

Essential Skills / Personal Characteristics

• Exposure and good understanding of financial services domain
• Experience of working with multi-cultural teams in a geographically diverse environment
• Ability to learn and quickly get familiar with a complex business and systems environment.
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to think laterally to arrive at a solution
• Must have an eye for detail and analyse/relate to the business problem in hand
• Ability to develop & maintain good relationships with all business and systems stakeholders
• Self-motivation is essential, should demonstrate commitment to high quality solution
• Ability to discuss both business and related technology/system at various levels
• Excellent client-facing and internal communication skills and proven working experience in project management
• Outstanding analytical skills including analysing data, workflow, user or stakeholder inputs and ability to convert it into business outcomes
• Good knowledge of reporting tools such as OBIEE, Tableau with understanding of different types of reporting, storytelling using visualization, etc.
• Good analytical, judgment and decision-making ability along with critical thinking skills
• Excellent written, oral and presentation skills
• Ability to discuss both business and related technology/system at various levels
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to think laterally to arrive at a solution