Strategic Delivery & Change Manager - Finance

We’re First Central Insurance & Technology Group (First Central for short), an innovative, market-leading insurance company. We protect the things customers love so they can get on with what matters to them in life.

Data drives us. It fuels our outstanding distribution, finance, technology and legal services. Our underwriting skills are built on data expertise; it creates the insights we need to give the right cover to the right customers at the right price. But, it’s the people inside and outside our business that power us. They make us stand out, help us succeed. We’re ambitious. We’re growing. We’ve won awards.

Here at First Central, we're looking for a Strategic Delivery & Change Manager to work with Senior Stakeholders to create a vision and roadmap for the Finance Pillar. It's a great opportunity to have an impact by ensuring the alignment to the broader business outcomes.

You'll be responsible for the business management of your roadmap working directly with Technical Product Owners and the Technical Product teams to ensure a deep understanding of your initiatives and providing SME support throughout the delivery life cycle.

We're looking for someone who'll be confident supporting the Head of Delivery, Strategy and Change for Finance to deliver the data enhancements and maintenance of the data integrity required to ensure accurate and completeness financial reporting.

You'll assess projects which are coming inwards into the Finance Pillar from the wider business, liaising with the key stakeholders and engaging with them to ensure they're aware of the project milestones, requirements, dependencies and benefits.

We’re big on flexible working, so you'll spend most of your time working from home with a visit to the office in either Haywards Heath, West Sussex, or Salford Quays, Manchester office when required, but of course, it’s your choice - if you prefer to be in the office more - that's good with us too.

Core skills we’re looking for to succeed in the role:

• Strong Stakeholder Management & Communication skills - this role relies on working with others in the business
• Proven experience and skills in working in a change / Agile environment - we're a fast-paced business, so you'll need to enjoy change and be able to manage that effectively!
• Excellent organization skills - after all, you're going to be assessing and managing projects, so you'll need to keep things moving!
• Self-starter and motivated to push things forward

What's Involved:

• Support in defining, maintaining and executing a Finance Pillar roadmap aligned to the wider business plan in order to support the business manager’s strategy
• Create and maintain a comprehensive business area roadmap and vision
• Organise and facilitate ideation sessions working with pillar stakeholders and technology teams to generate innovative features or product enhancements that are aligned to the business plan and industry/market trends
• Act as the voice of the customer engaging directly with Technical Product Owners and Product teams to ensure a deep understanding of your initiatives providing SME support through the delivery lifecycle.
• Work with Finance Business Partners capture and monitor change benefits.
• The administration of ADO to support the creation of work aligned to the business area roadmap including technical products and the wider business plan
• Manage all aspects of development related change including requirements, business risks and issues
• Support the preparation of investment cases and business proposals for new initiatives, conducting cost-benefit analysis and financial forecasting to support decision-making by senior management and stakeholders
• Ensure business readiness for technical and non-technical change, working with supporting areas, to ensure the appropriate approvals and operating procedures are in place to support the change
• Ensure understanding of impact to Finance of wider business initiative and projects
• Ensuring key stakeholders are engaged and effectively communicated with on any projects which will impact Finance.
• Responsible for ensuring all initiatives and change have complete and accurate business requirements.
• Champion, assist and support the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of financial data to ensure better informed data-driven decisions and accuracy of financial and regulatory reporting.
• Support the Finance Pillar in their strategy to improve the data quality and accuracy from integrated systems.
• Conduct colleague management duties including:
  • Manage, mentor and support development of colleagues to maximise their experience and learning.
  • Deliver coaching and feedback to direct reports to achieve KPI’s and SLAs, and
  • Conduct regular performance reviews, including probationary reviews and annual appraisals as necessary.
  • Assist the recruitment process where necessary.
• Deputise for the Head of Delivery, Strategy and Change where appropriate
• Any other duties as reasonably required.

Experience & Knowledge:

• Demonstrable experience of Agile development approaches
• Demonstrable experience of managing change within an Agile methodology
• Demonstrable experience of creating Pillar roadmaps and translating into Epics aligned to Products
• Experience of working within a highly regulated environment
• Understanding of the insurance/financial services industry, its products and key regulations
• Strong stakeholder management experience within a fast-paced, matrixed environment
• Change process from ideation through to delivery and post-live management
• Understanding of UK personal lines insurance products, the UK insurance industry and the different distribution channels
• Knowledge of FCA requirements (including TCF)

Skills & Qualifications:

• Ability to influence senior stakeholders and external suppliers
• Highly motivated self-starter
• Ability to take quick confident decisions at a strategic level to move things forward
• Structured thinking to find solutions to complex problems and the ability to adopt a pragmatic way forward
• Strong leadership skills
• Ability to communicate complex information in an easily digestible format to key stakeholders
• Confidence in prioritising and balancing competing work streams
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written
• Good time management and organisation skills
• Attention to detail
• Excellent literacy and numeracy skills
• Entrepreneurial mind-set with the ability to spot opportunities
• Strong presentation skills
• Strong analytical skills and ability to drive process improvement, based upon analysis of data

Tools:

• MS Office / MS Project / SharePoint / TFS / Gemini / Atlas / ADO

Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity, apply now, and take your career to new heights with us!

What can we do for you?

People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive. To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full here.

Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.