Head of Financial Reporting

Capital flows and reporting

• Support and coordinate capital flows across the group to meet debt and equity servicing requirements - including dividends and intercompany loans - ensuring these are correctly structured, accounted for, and documented in line with tax, regulatory, legal and lender agreement requirements.
• Prepare lender reporting information and covenant calculations for review by FP&A functions prior to submission to lenders.

Annual Audit

• Lead the annual statutory audit end-to-end: plan the timetable, manage deliverables, and hold internal stakeholders accountable to deadlines.
• Look to deliver the main group audited accounts by end of March and all other legal entities by the end of April with key judgement areas (impairment, going concern, revenue recognition, capitalisation and expected credit loss analysis) and draft statutory accounts all completed ahead of the financial year end.
• Establish and run limited assurance procedures over the June half-year numbers for the regulated entities, so that distributable reserves can be verified and cash upstreamed to service group debt interest.
• Act as the primary day-to-day contact for external auditors, ensuring they have everything they need to work efficiently and that queries are resolved promptly.
• Prepare and own the full audit file - schedules, supporting documentation, variance analyses, and management representations - to a standard that minimises auditor review time.
• Proactively identify and resolve accounting or disclosure issues ahead of fieldwork to avoid surprises and keep the audit firmly on track.
• Communicate audit progress and findings clearly to the Group Finance Director and senior leadership, flagging risks early and with recommended solutions.

Tax Compliance

• Manage the group's tax compliance calendar, coordinating with external tax advisors to ensure Corporation Tax and VAT returns are prepared, reviewed, and filed on time.
• Manage Transfer Pricing and MIP/EBT and share scheme tax valuations.
• Provide advisors with accurate, well-organised underlying data and act as the internal point of contact to ensure returns reflect the group's position correctly.
• Support tax planning initiatives and help implement advisor recommendations in a practical, controlled manner.
• Stay current with changes to tax legislation in all jurisdictions that Equals operates in and assess their impact on the group, escalating material issues appropriately.
• Own the technical payroll tax and employment tax compliance position for the group, working with the payroll team in Management Accounting to ensure obligations are correctly determined, met accurately and filed on time.

Finance Risk & Control

• Own the Finance function's risk and control environment: Coordinate financial risk assessments across the Finance function, working with process owners to ensure risks are identified, documented, and managed on an ongoing basis. Maintain a comprehensive financial risk register covering material financial processes and exposure, rated both gross and net of controls, with a named owner and mitigating controls, together with action plans carrying named owners and target dates for improvement wherever a residual risk rating sits above risk appetite.
• Design and embed financial controls that are proportionate, effective, and auditable - ensuring the group's control framework keeps pace with business growth and regulatory expectations.
• Monitor control effectiveness, track action plan completion, and report the status of the Finance risk and control environment to the Group Finance Director and, where appropriate, to the Group Audit and Risk Committee.
• Act as the Finance function's primary point of contact for the Chief Internal Auditor, coordinating internal audit activity, facilitating access to information, and ensuring agreed actions are tracked and implemented on time.
• Run a standing horizon-scanning process for emerging risk — accounting and regulatory change, tax and legislative change. Support the business through evolving compliance and regulatory reporting requirements, including those relevant to Equals Money's status as a regulated payments institution.
• Develop financial stress tests for key financial risks and identify detailed mitigation plans to enact in the event of a stress scenario occurring. Develop financial golden rules as early indicators of potential stress scenarios that would trigger the commencement of mitigating actions as those scenarios develop.

Key Relationships

Day-to-day you will work closely with the Group Finance Director, your own team, and the wider Finance function - including the Head of Management Accounting on the close and year-end, who also owns Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and Payroll and to whom you will provide the technical positions on payroll tax, employment tax and expected credit loss provisioning, the Directors of Financial Control on entity and regulatory matters, and the Group Treasurer on capital flows. You will also work with the Head of Finance Projects on system and process change affecting reporting and control.

Beyond Finance, you will interact with legal, operations, product and other Equals support functions to support the reporting and control agenda. You will have periodic engagement with the Chief Internal Auditor and the Group Audit and Risk Committee in the context of the Finance risk and control environment.

Externally, you will be the key relationship owner for the group's external auditors and tax advisors - managing these relationships with professionalism and ensuring they remain productive and commercially efficient.

Your Profile

Skills & Experience

• ACA qualified with at least 5 years post-qualified experience, ideally gained in practice followed by a move into a corporate or fintech environment.
• Strong technical knowledge of IFRS, with the ability to apply standards to real-world situations and document your conclusions clearly.
• Proven experience preparing statutory accounts and managing group consolidations - you have done this before and can own the process end-to-end.
• Demonstrable experience running audit timetables and coordinating cross-functional inputs; you know what it takes to keep an audit on track.
• Strong working knowledge of Corporation Tax, VAT and Transfer Pricing compliance, with experience working alongside external advisors to deliver accurate returns and optimise tax planning for an international group.
• Exposure to financial risk and control frameworks - whether through internal audit, a controls-focused role in practice, or ownership of a risk register in industry.
• Experience of running an audit from within a business rather than solely from the practice side.
• Experience of leading or supervising others, with the confidence to manage experienced process owners and hold them to account.
• Advanced Excel skills and familiarity with ERP-based general ledgers are essential; NetSuite experience is a meaningful advantage.

Attitude & Behaviours

• Technically rigorous - you relish understanding and applying accounting standards and are proven to be very capable of consolidating group accounts in an international business.
• Rigorous - you set a