Financial Planning and Analysis Manager, Group

Role Overview

This group-level finance position owns the rhythm and quality of financial planning, reporting, and performance analysis across multiple entities. You will work closely with senior leadership and business unit heads to turn financial data into clear narratives, challenge assumptions, and highlight risks and opportunities early. The role matters because it gives decision-makers a reliable, forward-looking view of group performance and supports capital, strategic, and governance decisions.

Key Responsibilities

• Direct the annual budget cycle and rolling forecast process for all group entities, setting timetables, consolidating submissions, and testing key assumptions against group strategy.
• Produce monthly management packs that compare actual results with budget, rolling estimates, prior year, and strategic plan, explaining variances and trends for executives.
• Build and maintain executive dashboards, KPI scorecards, and profitability, margin, working capital, and ROI analyses that inform commercial and operational decisions.
• Partner with business unit leaders during quarterly and annual reviews, identifying underperformance, recommending interventions, and benchmarking entity results against internal and external measures.
• Assess financial and operational risks, monitor adherence to group finance policies and reporting standards, and escalate material governance or control concerns to the Group CFO.
• Support M&A assessments, capital investment reviews, business cases, scenario modelling, and sensitivity analysis for strategic initiatives and executive committee reporting.
• Drive continuous improvement in reporting systems and processes, using SAP, BI platforms, AI-enabled analytics, and other tools to automate outputs and sharpen insights.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Professional accounting qualification such as CPA, ACCA, ACA, or an equivalent credential; an MBA is advantageous.
• Twelve to fifteen years of total work experience, including eight to ten years after qualification, gained in a manufacturing environment.
• Deep technical grounding in financial planning and analysis, financial modelling, rolling forecasting, budgetary control, capital investment appraisal, and business performance management.
• Strong scenario analysis, data analytics, visualisation, and business intelligence reporting skills.
• Proven leadership capabilities: strategic thinking, business partnering, stakeholder management, influencing, executive presentation, commercial acumen, and change management.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel, Power BI, and PowerPoint skills; hands-on experience with SAP S/4HANA or a comparable ERP; familiarity with financial planning and consolidation tools.
• Practical use of AI-enabled productivity and analytics tools to improve reporting, forecasting, and decision support.
• Fluency in English, with excellent written, oral, and presentation skills for non-finance audiences.
• Personal qualities include team-working, conflict management, negotiation, ethical judgement, project and resource leadership, methodical problem-solving, risk evaluation, and proactive commercial thinking with professional scepticism.
• Demonstrated high integrity and a solid understanding of accounting principles and regulatory guidelines.

Success in this role will be measured by the timeliness and accuracy of monthly reporting, budget and forecast accuracy, the quality of decision-support analysis, early identification and mitigation of business risks, improvements in reporting automation, stakeholder satisfaction, and delivery of strategic finance initiatives.