Finance Analyst (Financial Planning and Analysis) at the British Council

The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We create friendly knowledge and understanding between the people of the UK and other countries. We do this by making a positive contribution to the UK and the countries we work with - changing lives by creating opportunities, building connections and engendering trust.

We work with over 100 countries across the world in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society. Each year we reach over 20 million people face-to-face and more than 500 million people online, via broadcasts and publications. Founded in 1934, we are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter and a UK public body.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Finance Analyst (Financial Planning and Analysis) - Nigeria

Location: Abuja / Lagos
Pay band: 6
Contract Type: Locally Engaged
Department: Finance
Duration: Indefinite      

Role Purpose

• At an unprecedented time of change globally, the British Council seeks an experienced Finance Analyst to support the Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) specialism within the Finance Function in Nigeria.
• The role will support the Financial Planning and Analysis Lead in providing professional guidance in Financial Planning and Analysis, supporting country Business Development Managers and programme / operational delivery managers, and providing assurance on the underlying business financial performance.
• The post holder will support the analyses and interpretation of short-term and long-term financial and operational plans through management information reporting, analysis and review of financial trends, and impact assessment to support and enable informed business decisions.
• This post will be part of the FP&A team in Nigeria reporting to the Financial Planning & Analysis Manager.

Main Opportunities / Challenges for this Role
The role presents great opportunity for us in building a strong, efficient, effective, innovative and value driven financial control services for the British Council.

The role holder will:

• Support in the end to end financial planning and analysis function for Nigeria while ensuring accuracy, completeness and timeliness of reports
• Support financial analysis and reporting for the subsidiaries’ board
• Act as one of the key finance business partners to senior managers and business units across operations in Nigeria.
• Ensure compliance with internal British Council financial planning and analysis reporting standards and any other applicable policies and procedures.
• The finance function has gone through several change programmes, and the post holder will play a key role in sustainability and achieving desired results of the changes and improvement projects, especially those that are related to financial planning and analysis.
• The organisation requires the financial function to have a level of commercial finance acumen as we expand our income generating activities, streamline our portfolio and target more partnership income. As a result, the role holder will contribute in driving income target/performance.

Requirements
Essential:

• Fluency in written and spoken English.
• Qualified accountant - ACA /  ACCA – with a minimum of 4 years post-qualification experience in similar role.
• Bachelor’s Degree in any field.
• Proven experience in data analysis and visualisation in line with best practice
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills.
• ERP systems experience (transaction level and reporting).
• Delivery of results within a complex international structure and reporting to tight deadlines.                  
• Working in virtual teams.
• Able to relay complex financial information in an easy-to-understand way to support non-financial managers to deliver against financial performance indicators.

Desirable:

• Masters Degree.
• Experience working with the Big 4 audit firms.
• Experience in the use of a wide range of analytics, planning, reporting, and visualisation tools/applications.
• Experience using SAP.
• Experience delivering and supporting the implementation of stringent FP&A requirements to multi-disciplinary internal staff and external partners.
• Direct experience of applying FP&A procedures within complex and high-risk operating environments to meet challenging contractual standards.
• Demonstrable experience of thinking creatively to design / redesign business processes to make measurable step-change efficiency gains in collaboration with relevant manager/team lead.

Remuneration
N8,106,740 annually

Application Closing Date
12th November, 2021 (23:59 South Africa time)