Senior Lead Analyst

Function Description:

Finance is a collaborative team, playing a key role in advising all areas of the business. We have a strategic seat at the table and our unique insights are valued in a highly competitive marketplace and increasingly complex global regulatory environment.

This team collaborates globally to deliver expert accounting, reporting & advisory services, and financial risk control & governance, while supporting business growth & protecting shareholder value.

• Responsible for managing monthly accounting for various legal entities ensuring monthly journal entry (MJE) protocol to meet compliance, completeness & accuracy standards.
• Responsible for compliance with internal service level agreements (SLA), guidelines and accounting policies and regulatory requirements of the process
• End to end ownership of key enterprise financial processes like Merchant Withholding Tax, Staff Group accounting
• Deploy internal accounting & external reporting implications of new & amended accounting standards
• Real Time Analysis of Legal Entity Results, identification of anomalies during close leading up to results submission to Street
• Support / participate in standardization, automation and continuous improvement initiatives as well as other business partner initiatives
• Maintain high accuracy and productivity standards
• Awareness of the AXP Legal and alternate hierarchies, accounting close governance & consolidations
• Maintain close contact with customer / business partners and other interface groups to ensure a smooth service delivery
• Stakeholder relationship management
• Ensure controls & compliance with prevailing policies & procedures such as SOX, Process Risk Self Assessment (PRSA), etc.
• Ensure that all deadlines are continually met and adequate controls are maintained over the processes to ensure integrity of the information
• Ability to work across multiple time zones
• Leading accounting & reporting financial processes as per the aligned SLA’s for creation of complete & accurate financial statements

Critical Factors to Success (Outcome Driven):

Business Outcomes:

• Own & maintain financial/data integrity while managing end-to-end global accounting processes
• Stay relevant to the business/functional requirements
• Pro-actively develop meaningful data insights/trends to enable finance decision support to our customer’s/business partners for more effective planning & forecasting activities.
• Understand & leverage intelligent automation technologies to generate use cases within the team & create opportunities to support the automation team to get that implemented .
• Ensure first pass yield

Leadership Outcomes:

• Put enterprise thinking first, connect the role’s agenda to enterprise priorities and balance the needs of customers, partners, colleagues & shareholders.
• Lead with an external perspective, challenge status quo and bring continuous innovation to our existing offerings
• Demonstrate learning agility, make decisions quickly and with the highest level of integrity
• Lead with a digital mindset and deliver the world’s best customer experiences every day

Skills/Capabilities:

Functional

• Strong understanding of end-to-end AR/AP process flow, accounting & reconciliation
• Basic understanding of reporting
• Ability to connect accounting & reporting
• Understanding of financial consolidation process
• Understanding of operational, SOX & other related control framework compliance
• Ability to research & embed relevant best practices

Preferred:

• Techno finance skills

Technical

• Awareness of US GAAP/Local GAAP/IFRS (Accounting knowledge)
• Analytical skills with the ability to undertake cause effect analysis
• Knowledge of financial systems Preferred:
• Basic understanding & appreciation of automation capabilities
• Understanding of business products

Platforms

• Advanced MS office suits such as Excel, Word, Power point

Preferred:

• Ability to use analytical tools for financial systems such as Oracle, IRIS, OBIEE, Essbase, Hyperion Financial Reporting (HFR), etc.

Behavioral:

Enterprise Leadership Behaviors

• Set The Agenda: Define What Winning Looks Like, Put Enterprise Thinking First, Lead with an External Perspective
• Bring Others With You: Build the Best Team, Seek & Provide Coaching Feedback, Make Collaboration Essential
• Do It The Right Way:

Compliance Language

Academic Background:

• Graduate / Post-Graduate in Commerce with 2-5 years of relevant experience

Past Experience:

• 2-5 years of past experience in financial accounting domain with knowledge of Oracle/ERP, card business model.
• Strong English Language skills (both written and verbal)