An exciting opportunity has opened up for a passionate candidate, who is looking for career progression, to join our fast-paced UK&I Financial Control Team as a Financial Control Business Partner (FC BP). The UK&I Financial Control Team sits within the Intact Controls Hub, a cross functional team of control-based experts and forms part of a Global Financial Control Team. Operating within a demanding and changing statutory and regulatory environment, the role requires high professional standards and energy levels. 

This role is key to the UK&I Financial Control team, supporting compliance with relevant Intact and IFC Group policies, underpinning the Canadian NI52-109 regulatory standard for internal financial controls. Your work must therefore be undertaken with high degrees of professional excellence, diligence, and tenacity. The exposure this enables you to interact with a wide range of different stakeholders, from across the business, and to quickly develop your knowledge and expertise and your general understanding of the business. 

The Financial Control Business Partner will report into the Head UK&I Financial Control, working closely with the other FC BPs / Managers, Financial Control Accountants and ITGC Consultants to support an effective and robust Financial Control Framework (FCF). This role will provide expert knowledge, skills and interventions to influence, challenge and support the achievement of compliance with all relevant requirements of the FCF, in line with NI52-109 across business process areas ensuring a robust framework that can be relied upon by a wide and senior stakeholder base. 

You’ll make an impact by: 

• Partner with Process and Control Owners to ensure that a robust financial control framework is designed and operated by Line 1 to effectively mitigate material financial reporting risk and fraud and to ensure compliance with NI52-109. 

• Provide appropriate challenge and advice in relation to the development of new processes and controls within Line 1, to ensure the relevant risks are effectively mitigated. 

• Reporting to local Financial Controllers over the efficacy of the financial control environment and ensuring that any deficiencies are addressed sustainably, suitably and timely. 

• Complete control validation activities with a risk based mindset, bringing appropriate challenge. 

• Ensuring validation is completed to a high quality with clear and with well documented conclusions. 

• Provide oversight to ensure Line 1 owners maintain process documentation in accordance with the expectations outlined in the FCF. 

• Drive and ensure effective and sustainable remediation of process and control deficiencies to ensure material risks are mitigated, including any required actions and compensatory behaviours. 

• Undertake risk refreshes and process deep dives to ensure that the FCF is designed effectively and compliantly. 

• Ensure that the FCF is proportionate and efficiently/effectively maintained. 

• Use key management information, from many sources, to truly understand the financial control and operational risks that can impact upon process efficacy – e.g. incidents, other sources of assurance, projects/change etc. 

• Partner with the business in preparation for, and during, change programmes to ensure that the financial control environment is well maintained and not impeded by the projects – in fact, using such opportunities to improve efficiencies and controls robustness. 

• Effectively engaging with Risk and Internal Audit functions and external audit team 

Your skills and experience: 

• Risk and control knowledge, expertise and experience is essential 

• Qualified accountant / experienced internal/external auditor (financial/insurance services experience beneficial) 

• Effective communicator in written and oral form 

• Effective and confident stakeholder engagement 

• Solid understanding of financial processes – reporting and feeder/business systems – and ability to challenge performance, control and remediation requirements 

• Ability and confidence to interpret, investigate and robustly challenge complex sources of data and information to understand and develop controls, assurance levels and requirements 

• Confident ability to provide technical controls guidance to process and control owners 

• Ability to confidently challenge, enforcing integrity and robustness in the financial control environment while also balancing this with pragmatism and the ability to apply sound judgement