Senior Finance Business Partner

Senior Finance Business Partner (Interim)

Phoenix PLC

Telford / Hybrid Working / UK Travel

£ To attract high calibre operator

The Business

Phoenix Group Holdings PLC is a FTSE 100 business with a turnover of £6.3bn in 2022. It’s the UKs largest long-term savings and retirement business and offer our 12 million customers products across their market-leading brands, including Standard Life, SunLife and ReAssure, with c.£259billion of assets under administration. For those who know the Telford area, in 2020 Phoenix acquired ReAssure headquartered in Telford and formerly known as Admin Re and Windsor Life Assurance. It’s previous major acquisition was Standard Life in 2018. They are tackling key issues like transitioning their portfolio to net zero by 2050.

The business is split into 3 divisions, Open Book (selling new life and pension policies), Heritage (acquiring and managing closed policy books) and Asset Management (responsible for investing financial assets to get the best return).

This opportunity sits within the relatively new, but rapidly expanding Asset Management (AM) Entity. This business has grown from 80 people in 2022 to 180 today, to 280 by 2024. The current "Business as Usual" cost base is £40m, growing to £60m by 2024. On top of this the Change function has an expenses base of c£50m with ownership of the cost of external management fees for asset investment, c£300m.

The People Culture

Phoenix actively want to be the best place that any of their 6,800 colleagues have ever worked! The business promotes flexible working with an expectation that you’ll be in the Telford office approx 3 days per week with regular travel to Edinburgh and London offices. Phoenix are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best.

• Passion - understanding - and acting on - what is important to customers, colleagues and society.
• Responsibility - building trust through accountability and empowering others to do the right thing.
• Growth - finding new ways to develop expertise and innovate.
• Courage - ambition in the challenges that are solved and speaking up.
• Difference - collaborating across boundaries and embracing difference to embrace the best customer and colleague experience.

The Role

The role will report into the Finance Director of AM with key responsibilities around enabling accurate and timely MI to support Exec’s commercial decisions whilst managing a team of 3 Finance Business Partners.

• Ownership of service cost model - ensuring all relevant MI available to Exec’s for commercial decisions on op model decisions
• Ownership & Implementation of Business Unit allocations model - ensures the service cost model is available in the lense of costs to individual business units, supporting decision making and alignment across the group, including responsibility for relevant challenge on expenses
• Ownership Solv II allocations model - ensuring a refreshed version available quarterly and all assumptions are documented, this will include being responsible for flagging any amendments or additional costs which are having a material impact on reserving.
• External asset management investment cost forecasting - leading on the reporting / forecasting / MI on external manager fees working closely with the SME’s within the business
• Develop and maintain Investment costs principles - Analysis BAU costs and challenging those costs which should be treated as 'Investment Costs’ which will including fund charging allocations
• Leading AM Entity support from a AM Finance perspective - supporting with the work to establish an AM entity with associated setup of ongoing processes/reporting (and handing this over to BAU team)

Who are we looking for?

• Ability to influence senior people in the organisation to drive change and delivery objectives.
• Financial modelling experience and strong analytical skills.
• Ability to see the big picture.
• Sound business acumen and a good understanding of market landscapes is a plus.
• Proactive and able to adapt quickly to changes, new priorities and responsibilities.
• Professional level communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across a wide range of stakeholders and maintaining effective relationships on behalf of Asset Management.
• Diligent working style with attention to detail and high standards for quality
• Exceptionally skilled in preparing polished presentations and reports.
• Self-starter and independent worker who takes accountability for end-to-end delivery of their work.
• Comfortable in navigating through uncertainty and high change environments

For further information on this opportunity please contact Lee Walker at Seymour John Ltd.