Position Title: Finance Director, External Reporting and Statutory Compliance
Reports to: Senior Finance Director
Job Purpose
- Lead External Reporting and Governance, ensuring full oversight of end-to-end processes relevant to financial and regulatory reporting and compliance with country statutory and governance requirements.
- Drive continuous improvement in reporting processes and governance frameworks by developing people and systems to support evolving demands from stakeholders, auditors, and regulatory authorities, and to adapt to new business models and working practices.
- Collaborate closely with Statutory Compliance, Finance, Legal, and GSC Finance leads and directors to achieve strategic and operational objectives, maintain timely and accurate reporting, ensure compliance with deadlines, and resolve escalations efficiently.
- Ensure the External Reporting and Governance team delivers efficient and effective service, meets all statutory and governance reporting deadlines, and maintains high standards of accuracy and transparency.
- Manage relationships with external parties, auditors, and functional in-country resources (including part-time local statutory compliance and governance resources) to support reporting and governance requirements for in-scope countries.
Duties And Responsibilities
- Plan and monitor external reporting and statutory compliance activities to ensure compliance with country regulatory requirements.
- Keep abreast of regulatory developments and advise stakeholders on their impact.
- Ensure all financial statements, declarations, and other required reports are submitted accurately and on time.
- Ensure appropriate review processes are in place and applied for all statutory filings and payments.
- Own and be accountable for all accounting balances and their reconciliations to external sources.
- Manage GSC teams and coordinate relevant data across functions to ensure timely delivery, avoiding extended audit periods and cost overruns.
- Ensure standard intercompany/transfer pricing agreements are prepared for all relevant IWG entities based on instructions and approved templates from Group Legal/Tax.
- Manage the administration of the Diligent Entities database (Blueprint).
- Serve as the point of contact for statutory audits and management letters, ensuring issues raised are coordinated and resolved with the relevant process teams and escalated where necessary.
- Proactively review balance sheets and the need for capital structure changes.
- Review statutory audit fees and other relevant professional fees and endorse them to the relevant Global Finance Directors for final approval.
- Perform tasks and/or conduct detailed reviews of the GSC team, particularly for countries that are high-risk or escalated by stakeholders.
- Assist with the integration and migration of systems, processes, and people as needed.
- Address escalations and manage expectations of stakeholders, external auditors, and functional in-country resources (i.e., part-time local IWG tax/field finance resources).
- Lead, direct, evaluate, and develop people.
- Proactively review and manage operational issues and risks, and implement mitigating actions.
- Build an internal control environment to ensure goals are met through high-quality, accurate, and timely service delivery.
- Drive efficiency through innovation, automation, and process improvements.
- Ensure process documentation is complete and up to date.
- Perform other tasks as assigned by the Group Head of Statutory Compliance.
Qualifications
- CPA
- At least 12-15 years of experience in statutory compliance/controllership, most recently in a similar leadership role within a large multinational.
- Knowledge of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the ability to convert to local reporting requirements.
- Strong team leader with the ability to coach and develop people.
- Experience managing teams that engage with country functional resources (part-time and full-time).
- Excellent communication skills (written and verbal), with the proven ability to communicate across all levels within the organization and, when needed, externally.
- Able to prioritize tasks, manage issues, and deliver expected results in a timely manner.
- Highly analytical and detail oriented.
- Ability to quickly gain the confidence of the business and colleagues through influencing skills.
- Comfortable with ambiguity and prepared to work in an agile, flexible manner.
- Thrive on change and foster a collaborative approach.
- Experience working in Big 4 auditing firms and in BPO/finance shared services operations.
- Experience dealing with and managing external parties, auditors, and in-country functional resources (part-time/full-time).
