Finance Business Partner

Our purpose focuses on how we contribute to society, and how our business decisions can contribute to greater trust and solving important problems. In order to achieve our purpose and deliver a first-class service to our clients, we need first-class support internally. The people who power us - our internal teams - have a vital role to make sure we have all the right resources, services and technology to be the best we can be. Not all of us work directly with external clients.

We are looking for a Finance Business Partner to join our high performing internal finance team supporting the Consulting Business.

PwC's Business Partnering teams work hand-in-hand with our employees across the business, informing our leaders on the key decisions that drive the business forward, and shape their engagements. We entrust our Business Partnering teams to be proactive and honest, to build relationships and influence, to understand, challenge, and hold a mirror to the business, and to translate the numbers into a business story.

To facilitate our exciting growth, PwC is evolving to future-proof our Business Partnering teams. To empower our people to focus more on insight, collaboration, and commerciality, we are placing new specialised lead roles within our Business Partnering teams, and refocusing the efforts of our core business partners. This refocusing is being accompanied by a renewed investment in technologies to drive our ways of working forward, freeing up time to let our people focus more on providing insights to people in the business, driving our growth agenda, and working together to solve complex challenges.

The Manager within the Business Partnering Team is the team's first port of call for general Finance and business decision support. Working closely with the Finance Leaders and coordinating a team of Senior Associates and Associates, this is a collaborative, diverse and engaging role, and a vital function to the business.

Our Finance teams are an integral part of each business unit, working closely with business leaders to help drive business performance, identify and drive financial improvements, prepare plans and budgets, and report on the performance of the business - commercially, and functionally. PwC takes a people-first approach to Finance, and empowers its Business Partnering teams to be collaborative and value-adding.

The individual in this role can expect to be exposed to a variety of critical Finance functions, depending on their skills and aspirations. They will also build working relationships with other Business Partnering teams, the Finance Directors, business leaders, and PwC's Centres of Excellence. The primary responsibilities and areas the Finance Management team operates across, which the candidate may gain experience in and choose to further develop, include:

Team Development:

• Working with the Finance Leader to ensure Senior Associate and Associate team learning and development is identified and actioned
• Mentoring responsibilities over Senior Associate and Associate members across Business Partnering

Business Strategy and Planning:

• Use business insights and detailed analysis to provide the business unit and Finance Leads with support and guidance on P&L management
• Own and lead a defined part of the business structure including being the first point of contact for the leadership team for the component parts of that business
• Provide ad hoc support to the Finance Leader, responsible for sourcing information and providing quality analysis of information
• Provide depth of insight to the relevant Leadership team enabling key strategic decision making
• Ownership of revenue and cost forecasting
• Providing the business area with additional insight to the key MI in existence and support the development of new MI by understanding the business needs
• Demonstrating an understanding of the business issues and applying market, industry and firm knowledge
• Providing commercial insight by providing performance improvement advice to the business and working closely with both the Commercial Team on complex material engagements

Budgeting and Forecasting:

• Working with the Strategy & Planning Lead and business Finance Leaders in preparing budgets, plans and forecasts.
• Delivering forward looking and insight driven reporting for the business, and providing forward-looking commentary to help the business plan, prepare and manage future performance.
• Providing an in-depth knowledge of the markets which the business operates in, using this to build insight for helping the business determine investments, and growth opportunities.

Performance Management and Commercial Oriented Solutions:

• Provides and communicates interpretation of the monthly financial results and commentary to the Finance Leader/Business Area leadership
• Responsible for monitoring areas of financial performance against Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) held in the financial scorecard, escalating issues where management action is required, with supporting analysis
• Work closely with the wider business support team to develop relationships and understand the strategic imperatives of the Cluster
• Interpretation and communication of financial performance

Financial Control and Compliance:

• Provide Partners with relevant accounting advice from the bid stage to through the life of engagements
• Provide the business area with relevant Financial Control expertise to ensure revenue recognition and accounting standards are achieved throughout
• Providing local financial risk knowledge to the Financial Control centre of excellence and support the central team with complex queries that require local business insight
• Works in close partnership with the Financial Control centre of excellence to encourage a culture of strong financial discipline and adoption of One Firm financial policies and procedures within the business unit
• Supports the year end Audit process with the Finance Leader and Financial Control Centre of Excellence

Complex Engagement Support:

• Provide ongoing commercial advice to complex engagements
• Undertake revenue recognition, forecasting, performance variance activities as required by engagements.
• Provide tax, immigration, or inter-territory advice as required supported by specialist finance teams.
• Drive and challenge engagement performance through analysis and presentation of financial information to senior decision makers
• Proactively highlight risks and opportunities to financial performance and develop actions to mitigate, correct or exploit as appropriate with senior decision makers
• Ensure alignment of top down targets to operational plans
• Actively influence idea generation with respect to commercials, leveraging specialist team for production
• Work with engagement leaders to ensure benefits are delivered and maximised
• Work with engagement leaders to understand lessons learnt and take corrective actions as necessary
• Monitor and challenge complex engagements on control effectiveness
• Ensure that financials are created or validated by appropriate areas of finance

Skills & Requirements:

• A relevant finance qualification such as CA, ACA, CIMA or ACCA
• Commercially minded with a deep business understanding
• Able to demonstrate application of accounting standards, including IFRS 15
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills with good attention to detail
• Action orientated and a self-starter, focused on continuous improvement and developing their team
• A strong relationship builder who builds trust in their key stakeholders
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Intermediate to advanced excel
• Technology enabled mindset and able to identify and drive change through technology adoption
• Commercially minded with a desire to develop a strong business understanding
• A strong relationship builder who builds trust with their key and senior stakeholders
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with good attention to detail