Senior Accountant

Phoenix Group

Senior Accountant for Standard Life working in balance sheet management and process automation. Collaborating with the leadership team to ensure financial integrity and business efficiency.

Posted 7/20/2026full-timeBirmingham • 🇬🇧 United KingdomSenior💰 £62,000 - £80,000 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in operational accounting processes, general ledger management, and balance sheet reconciliation, with a strong focus on stakeholder management and change delivery. Capable of developing teams to enhance their understanding of balance sheet risks and improve reporting outputs.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Operational Accounting ProcessesGeneral Ledger ManagementStakeholder ManagementChange DeliveryFinancial Reporting

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Balance Sheet ReconciliationData AnalysisReport WritingFinancial Results AnalysisGeneral Ledger InterrogationIFRS KnowledgeSII KnowledgeUK GAAP KnowledgeAccounting Issue ResolutionAutomation of Reconciliation Processes

Soft Skills

Relationship BuildingTeam DevelopmentEffective CommunicationProblem SolvingAnalytical Thinking

Tools & Technologies

Workflow ToolingDashboard ReportingAFTP Programme Tools

Certifications & Qualifications

Fully Qualified Accountant

Industry Keywords

Financial ServicesGroup Accounting ManualBalance Sheet RiskControl EvidenceStandard Life Reporting Hierarchies

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Full responsibility for monitoring and reporting on the health of the balance sheets for all legal entities within the group.
Accountability for all general ledger reconciliations (policyholder, reinsurance, investments, expenses etc.), providing assurance that all balances are appropriately supported, implementing new methods of monitoring aging of balances and measuring balance sheet risk.
Accelerate the production of balance sheet reconciliations via data cleanse, automation and use of workflow tooling.
Review and improve key controls and control evidence relating to balance sheet management.
Drive the centralisation of reconciliations into a single team, owning the e2e process for centralisation including gathering requirements, designing and implementing solutions, stakeholder management and business readiness.
Designing and implementing new tooling under the banner of the AFTP programme which will enable automation of reconciliation processes, enhanced oversight of reconciliations completed by outsourcers and new reports which enable the team to effectively manage balance sheet risk.
Delivery lead for the AFTP implementation, representing the Operational Reporting & Controls Manager and the Head of the Accounting Operations Centre in AFTP project forums. In this role you will ensure that the change teams pay proper regard to the requirements of the business including our RAID and channel communications between the change and BAU teams, escalating for support when needed.
Ensuring that the AFTP solution design is as simple and cost effective as possible, focusing on standardisation of input data over the creation of multiple, bespoke reconciliation rules.
Managing a variety of stakeholders (both internal and external) to source, interpret and challenge balance sheet reconciliation data and reporting.
Design and implementation of new dashboard and reporting outputs that will provide downstream customers and senior stakeholders with insights into the health of the balance sheet and assurance that controls are operating effectively.
Develop your team such that they become subject matter experts, with an in depth understanding of the group balance sheets, patterns and trends in balance sheet movements and a full understanding of potential balance sheet risk factors to the group.
Developing your new team to ensure that they have the capability to review and challenge large volumes of balance sheet related data, identify and resolve accounting issues, investigate issues and make recommendations on how to improve the health of the balance sheet and to deliver high quality outputs in short timescales.

Requirements

What you’ll need

In depth knowledge of operational accounting processes and key areas of challenge
Knowledge and experience of change delivery
Knowledge of general ledger and source data interrogation
Detailed understanding of all dimensions in the general ledger and the attributes within them e.g. nominal, entity fund, product, interco etc.
Detailed understanding of the Standard Life reporting hierarchies
Knowledge of IFRS, SII and UK GAAP technical accounting and the Group Accounting Manual
Demonstratable post qualification experience in the financial services industry
Proven track record of building relationships and effectively managing stakeholders
Experience of managing BAU in parallel with implementing change
Experience of managing and developing people
Ability to analyse financial results, identify key areas of risk and interrogate data to identify and resolve root cause issues
Report writing experience, demonstrating an ability to produce well written, analytical reports that can be used to support decision making.
Building new reports supporting the review and analysis of general ledger data.
Fully qualified accountant

Benefits

Comp & perks

indicative bonus range of 16% - 32%
private medical cover
38 days annual leave
excellent pension
12x salary life assurance
career breaks
income protection
3x volunteering days
much more.