United Arab Emirates
ACCA Qualified Accountant with 15 years PQE in Financial Services and Professional Services. Currently leading the Finance Team at Biz Group in Dubai where we are digitally disrupting the Learning Landscape with Personalized Adaptive Micro Learning and Virtual Reality Leadership experiences. www.learningwithbiz.com
Manage the Group’s Capex process for the 27 trading Hotels, developing reporting against budget for the Board, authorising expenditure and supporting the Hotel based Financial Controllers to submit meaningful ROI calculations to support their Capex requests. Lead the integration of the statutory accounting software, K-Trinity, transforming the production of the Group’s 35 statutory accounts from a manual, labour intensive task in to an efficient and accurate process. Responsible for the monthly consolidation of over 30 entities to produce the Group’s management accounts and associated Board papers. Preparation of the Head Office Budget, and subsequent cost control management through the year. Review of preferred agent agreements to ensure the corporate business they direct to the group is on commercially viable terms. Production of monthly sales reporting for the business, and ad hoc analysis tracking the performance of individual sales managers and 3rd party agents. Oversee the Group’s supplier rebate process ensuring up to £7.5m of discounts are recouped across the Group.
Responsible for the fiscal and financial control of 8 European business units, ensuring both internal and external reporting obligations are met. Supported the transition to a shared service finance function, identifying best practice process and driving policy alignment. Motivating and leading a team of qualified accountants through this period of change. Oversight of cost management against budget for 8 European business units. Oversight of all payroll accounting for overseas business units.
My team and I were responsible for providing financial reporting, insight and analysis to the Board and the wider business to support the Company’s overriding objective of minimising losses through effective debt management. Successfully managed the loan impairment charge below budget in 2011 and 2012 for the Group’s £38bn residential mortgage book. Acted as Finance Business partner for our Debt Management team, presenting our 3 Operational Performance and Analysis Packs to the Senior Management Teams each month, leading the discussions and influencing behavior in debt management. Responsible for producing Operational KPIs and targets, agreeing bonus schemes, challenging processes and reviewing policy changes. Acted as the Finance representative on relevant projects within Operations, providing input and support at the planning stage through to completion. Responsible for preparing the Impairment rolling forecasts, 10 year business plans and budget, the latter being one of the Group’s bonus related performance metrics. • Sat on the Forbearance and Concessions committee, responsible for determining the best exit strategy for customers in financial difficulties. Understanding the company’s business rules, lending policy and the FSA’s guidelines on treating customers fairly are all pre-requisites for a seat on this committee. • Responsible for preparing Risk and Audit Committee reports. • Sat on the Finance Reward & Recognition Panel, reviewing nominations and helping to re-shape the scheme to ensure a consistent and equitable approach to recognising excellent performance throughout Finance.