Head of Commercial Finance - Home Insurance

Discipline: Finance & Strategy
Job type: Permanent
Contact email: simon@weareedenbrook.com
Job ref: J3467
Published: over 2 years ago
Working as Head of Commercial Finance - Home Insurance for a Market Leading Insurer you will be acting as the lead Finance contact for the assigned business area(s), with a particular focus for this role on the Trading/Pricing, Underwriting and Commercial functions, to ensure that financial aspects, controls and objectives are adequately considered in commercial decisions: • Facilitate effective and timely finance communication with the function; • Support and influence decision-making processes to achieve better financial/commercial outcomes and align to the Group’s overall strategy; • Identify and articulate the key drivers of business and financial performance and gain timely business and management buy-in to improvement actions; • Facilitate the delivery of the function inputs to the annual budgets/plans and regular forecasts, ensuring their alignment to the Group’s overall strategy. PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES • Act as Finance lead for the home insurance product segment by proactively seeking to anticipate, understand and communicate opportunities, risks and key drivers of performance. • Participate with relevant function heads in the evaluation of operational performance, the impact / assessment and decision-making process for different operational responses, choices, initiatives, and project activities. • Provide analysis, commentary, and recommendations around KPI’s and financial impact. • Lead the production and delivery of agreed inputs to the monthly forecasts, annual budgets/plans, predominantly for the Trading/Pricing, Underwriting and Commercial functions considering premiums, volumes, burn cost, additional services revenue, associated marketing and acquisition costs, and expense budgets. • Coordinate with the Financial Modelling team to feed assumptions into the Group financial models and provide analysis and commentary for presentation to the Group Executive and Board • Develop analysis to support plans including scenario and what-if analysis. • Manage key inputs into the Financial Reporting team for associated activities including monthly accruals and provisions, reconciliations, and preparation of monthly reports. • Support transformation activities across the function and broader business • Design, recommend and agree new and improved functional reporting, analysis and processes that support stakeholders’ requirements. Key RELATIONSHIPS • Leaders across Home Insurance product line (Underwriting, Pricing, Commercial) • Cost centre managers • CFO, Head of Commercial Finance and Finance Leadership Team • Group Executive Committee SKILLS & EXPERIENCE • Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA, or equivalent) • Experience working efficiently and effectively with a variety of colleagues from across the business and of differing levels of seniority • Can demonstrate ability to bring financial and strategic insight to current and future financial performance • Must be able to confidently challenge and influence senior management • Must have excellent communication skills and a desire to understand different operational areas and business activities • Must understand the impact of external factors and internal decisions on revenue, claims and expenses • Able to apply working and commercial knowledge to maximise profitability and long-term value creation across a broad scope including various product areas, distribution channels, and cost models, and considering policy growth, segmental contribution and customer lifetime value.