Senior Planning Manager

Job Description

At abrdn, our purpose is to enable our clients to be better investors.

Clients worldwide trust us to find future-fit investment opportunities to deliver the outcomes they want. Our technology and insight help empower them to make better decisions, while the powerful partnerships we build help to enhance the expertise that we offer. And by enabling clients to invest responsibly, it helps us to build a better world.

About the department

The Finance function is led by the Chief Financial Officer and comprises three specialist, centralised teams, and three business-focused commercial teams, supported by a small CFO Office to run the function.

• Business CFO teams – are responsible for supporting Business CEOs by driving the commercial agenda of the business and rely on the other areas to produce core materials.
• Group Finance Control, Performance & Planning – responsible for all external reporting activity (group, statutory and regulatory) with the goal to produce high quality reporting materials, on time and reflective of best practice. Oversight and development of the Finance control environment also sits here, together with the management of the relationship with external audit and the Audit Committee. In addition, responsible for all performance and planning activities centrally for the group, including coordination of planning, forecasting, quarterly business reviews. Coordination with investor relations, which reports to the CEO, also sits here.
• Capital and Tax – responsible for running all capital and tax matters centrally for the whole group, as a global, specialist function.
• Finance Operations – responsible for all processing and production activity is centralised here, largely on an outsourced basis. The goal is to combine maximum efficiency and increasing automation with robust controls. All P&L, balance sheet and ledger control activity, including outsourced oversight, is brought together here.

About the role

The Senior Planning Manager will get the opportunity to work at Group level within FP&A, you will get to work closely at a senior level with Finance colleagues and key business stakeholders to own and develop FP&A processes.

You will get to deliver critical MI, challenge, and planning and forecasting outputs. You will bring consistency of processes, analysis and insight across abrdn Finance, providing timely and high-quality outputs in terms of content, structure and format.

In addition, the role supports the variable compensation structure and the Finance interactions with Reward and Remco.

Key responsibilities

• Support delivery of overall FP&A processes, delivering critical MI, challenge, and commercially focussed planning and forecasting outputs
• Support and develop robust monthly forecasts, engaging and collaborating across Finance as required
• Significant and noticeable step change in the quality, impact and timing of Plans and Forecasts
• Support the development of Remco / variable compensation policy and schemes, working with Reward and the technical accounting teams
• Detailed analysis on variable compensation, modelling both new and existing schemes and forecasting outcomes
• Proactively supporting the transformation of FP&A and Finance to ensure a ‘future fit’ platform with appropriate governance, controls and functionality

About the candidate requirements

• Asset management or financial services background essential, with sound knowledge and experience of FP&A, ideally within an Asset Manager/ Wealth Manager
• Understanding of financial systems and processes (Anaplan experience preferable)
• Understanding and working knowledge of variable compensation schemes
• Proven commercial acumen
• Demonstrate credibility with stakeholders (relationships, influence and confidence)

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed employer. Therefore, if you have a disability and would like to apply to one of our UK roles under the Disability Confident Scheme, please notify us by completing the relevant section in our candidate questionnaire and one of our team will reach out to support you through your application process.

Our benefits

There's more to working life than coming home with a good salary. We have an environment where you can learn, get involved and be supported.

When you join us, your reward will be one of the best around. This includes 40 days’ annual leave, a 16% employer pension contribution, a discretionary performance based bonus (where applicable), private healthcare and a range of flexible benefits – including gym discounts, season ticket loans and access to an employee discount portal. You can read more about our benefits here.

Our business

Enabling our clients to be better investors drives everything we do. Our business is structured around three distinct areas – our vectors of growth – focused on our clients’ changing needs. You can find out more about what we do here.

We’re committed to providing an inclusive workplace where all forms of difference are valued and which is free from any form of unfair or unlawful treatment. We define diversity in its broadest sense – this includes but is not limited to our diversity of educational and professional backgrounds, experience, cognitive and neurodiversity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or belief and ethnicity and geographical provenance. We support a culture that values meritocracy, fairness and transparency and welcomes enquiries from everyone.If you need assistance or an adjustment due to a disability please let us know as part of your application and we will assist.