Head of Strategic Finance for Enterprise Technology Experience (ETX), Global Business Services (GBS) and Enterprise Allocations (EA) (BOSTON)

Head of Strategic Expense - Enterprise Technology Experience (ETX), Global Business Services (GBS) and Enterprise Allocations (EA)

Full-Time

New York, NY, Boston, MA or Springfield, MA

The Opportunity

The Head of Strategic Finance for Enterprise Technology Experience (ETX), Global Business Services (GBS) and Enterprise Allocations (EA) will work with management of both ETX, GBS and colleagues across Corporate Finance to provide high quality analysis and information to facilitate decision-making. The incumbent will report to the Head of Strategic Expense Management.

The Team

As a member of Corporate Finance, you’ll have an opportunity to join an engaged team of professionals who provide high-quality analysis and advice to the enterprise’s leadership team and actively support both growth and profitability.

The Impact

As the senior corporate finance executive working regularly with the senior management team of ETX and GBS, this role is responsible for leading the following Corporate Finance work:

• Lead matrixed teams that prepare high quality financial analysis and information to influence important decisions. This includes quarterly reviews of spend versus plan and forecasts and contributes to the development of robust CBAs (business cases) and measuring and updating progress as they are executed.

• Serve as the Senior Finance leader supporting ETX and GBS leadership teams on the development and support of strategic plans, and short-term and long-term management goals and objectives, appropriately balancing finance partner and corporate stewardship responsibilities.

• Respected thought partner in the development and execution of strategies and initiatives to achieve organizational aspirations, including active, ongoing involvement in pursuing the Strategic Planning and Delivery revenue enhancement and efficiency goals. This includes working to simplify financial processes, data flows and assignment of cost allocation impacts.

• Maintain strong knowledge of technology development life cycle process, technology innovation, technology risk analysis and assessment, technology management, competitor technology practices, and key industry metrics – which are used to assess risk, return on investment, and spend versus budget.

• Monitor financial performance drivers, risks, metrics and timely communicating trends and observations.

• Evolve reporting and current processes to modern approaches (e.g. dashboards with high quality financial analysis and insights) to facilitate important decisions, working with FP&A, Controllers, Actuarial, Corporate Strategy and others. This includes leading teams that develop financial insights that are representative of factual performance and deep insights to drive decision support and track management action. 

• Lead matrixed teams that drive the development of ETX and GBS forecasts with a focus on material aspects of P&L and Balance Sheet impacts with clear documentation of basis for assumptions. Establish formal sign off on forecast and plan assumptions with ETX and GBS leaders. 

• Act as key liaison between ETX and GBS and the FP&A/Corporate Finance organization, leveraging work done throughout FP&A to provide holistic finance support to ETX and streamlining requests from FP&A/Corporate Finance of ETX and GBS.

• Informs Global talent strategy including establishing appropriate governance and transparency around hiring practices and expectations commensurate with financial plan.

• Establish robust process around service provider and service receiver expense transparency (e.g. tech expense to product revenue ratios) to drive decision-making to improve financial performance and track results.

• Key contributor to the modernization of the strategic finance organization – leveraging ability to work through ambiguity, strong communication and change management and mobilize matrixed team’s around most important work.

The Head of Strategic Finance for ETX and GBS is also responsible for management of the Enterprise Expense Allocations and P&L Analytics team. 

• The Expense Lead of Allocations and P&L Analytics and their team have experience in financial expense allocation processes, inter-company allocations, financial statement analysis, driver-based forecasting, activity-based costing, and insurance products. The Expense Allocations team excels at working collaboratively and cross-functionally with subject matter experts to ensure that the company’s expense allocation methodology incorporates material assumptions.
• A large part of this Expense Allocation team’s responsibilities includes supporting and interacting with senior leaders on all things related to expense allocations and P&L analytics. Analysis includes, but is not limited to, in-depth GAAP and STAT variance analysis at the company consolidated level, unit cost calculations, capital budgeting, and market / peer expense analysis. The team provides the key inputs and analysis for setting annual expense targets, goals, and budget; and will work proactively with finance and business leaders to monitor expenses by business unit and product-level P&Ls.

This role will also liaison with the Strategic Planning & Delivery (SP&D), PMO and Procurement teams to increase transparency to improve economics and execution rigor

• Build more robust and pro-active transparency to improve economics (connect business drivers to spend, 3rd party spend, portfolio execution and eventual benefit realization)
• Transparency into funding capacity and alignment (improve T shirt size), CBA, execution health metrics and benefit realization (SPD & BAU programs) – linkage to forecast (spend and benefits)
• Transparency into Procurement levers / options and drive strategic trade-off discussions w/ ELT/SLT in partnership with procurement. Create clear linkage to forecast and process for SFBPs to validate growth, savings and cost avoidance

The Minimum Qualifications

• 15+ years experience working on financial aspects of large, sophisticated technology organizations, digital transformations and data strategy, including experience in financial services (experience with permanent insurance a plus)
• Ability to influence and lead others toward shared goals and objectives
• Knowledge of applicable U.S. GAAP financial reporting requirements (insurance regulatory reporting a plus)
• Exceptional relationship building and influencing skills
• Excellent communication and listening skills, including the ability to convey complex information in readily understandable terms
• Demonstrated experience with creative problem-solving and process improvement
• Ability to work well under pressure and manage multiple deliverables
• Depending on the home location of the candidate, this leader should have the ability to travel between our New York, Boston and Springfield locations as needed
• Bachelor’s degree in Business/Finance/Accounting or related discipline

Leadership Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain strong working relationships with ETX, business and corporate leaders, through regular value-add involvement in planning, strategy and team update meetings
• Communicate complex information and analysis in clear, simple and understandable terms with appropriate context, focused on actionable content
• Inspire, lead and execute on Corporate Finance transformation goals, including data-driven financial analysis, automated reporting, advanced analytics; developing staff and successors for key roles. Also, work to influence the culture, promoting self-service, collaboration, benchmarking and disciplined cost-benefit analyses
• Create an environment that fosters a culture of innovation, empowerment and collaboration.
• Actively champion the Corporate Finance’s work to attract, retain, and develop top-tier diverse talent

The Ideal Qualifications

• Innate ability to lead and influence senior leaders and executives through ambiguity to mobilize teams and peers to deliver on key results. Tech forward leader with proven track record of implementing new and innovative technologies with strong communication, training and change management skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with ability to convey complex materials to all levels of the organization including senior executives
• Demonstrated experience in implementing advanced forecasting / strategic planning techniques including activity based costing and zero-based budgeting
• Master’s degree in Business/Finance/Accounting or related discipline
• High degree of financial acumen
• Strong analytical skills; ability to analyze financial data sets and understand the “so what”
• Organized and detail-oriented; Ability to work well under pressure and manage multiple deliverables
• Proactive and self-motivated; anticipate upcoming business partner projects and deliverables
• Ability to think critically and demonstrate good judgment. Demonstrate experience with creative problem-solving
• Experience driving transformation efforts
• Ability to work through large data sets to understand key trends
• Innate desire to provide excellent service to clients
• MBA or CPA designation is a preference

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