Financial Planning & Analysis Lead

Finance business partners (FBPs) empower financially sound planning and decision making throughout the organization. You will do this by coaching others in financial acumen and telling compelling, data-driven stories to spur action. The Information Technology (IT) Lead Business Partner is a member of Securian's FP&A Team and is responsible for supporting overall Expense Management of Securian's IT Division.

In this role, you will engage IT Leaders in the budgeting and forecasting process, cost center management, expense monitoring and variance analysis, and serve as a liaison between IT leaders and business areas profit center finance teams to review both budget and actual expenses, including allocations. As a senior FBP, you will take a data-driven approach to partner with business leaders, enabling decision makers to make sound financial decisions.

As the lead IT business partner, the CIO and IT senior leaders will rely on you as a sought-after thought-partner for strategic decisions and for insights that help achieve performance targets and outcomes. You will work closely with other members of the IT business partner team to provide holistic IT finance reporting and analysis.

Responsibilities

Assess and anticipate decision makers' needs:

• Build strong relationships with executives and business unit leaders to understand their financial needs and challenges and anticipate the most effective support path.
• Surface nonexecutive decision makers' latent needs by actively listening to uncover new opportunities for creating FP&A decision support tools and services.
• Enable rapid improvement in service and support via a continuous feedback loop with all decision makers.
• Bring industry best practice perspectives and ideas to the team, including understanding of IT total cost of ownership frameworks, and stay up-to-date on industry trends and best practices.

Provide support to IT leaders to facilitate strong expense management and financial acumen:

• Review of direct and allocated results and forecasting with IT leaders throughout the year. This will involve leading the team to create, publish and present monthly quarter-end expense results and forecasts for the IT division.
• Support the quarterly close process, including review of accruals to ensure accurate and complete results.
• Pro-actively identify expense reduction opportunities, working with IT and finance leaders to assess and action on enterprise reduction strategies.
• Provide support and coaching for IT leaders in support of business case best practices, including development of cost / benefit analysis.

Provide leadership for the IT Expense budgeting and forecasting processes:

• Serve as the lead contact for IT during the annual budget process, understanding IT initiatives and staffing needs to develop the budget for approval.
• Support IT leaders in determining strategies to close any gaps between projected expenses and expense targets.
• Partner with IT leaders (and IT business partner team) to review allocation methods, to ensure operational expenses are charged to the appropriate business areas.

Serve as the liaison between IT and business areas:

• Ensure that IT leaders understand how expenses are allocated to business areas, and that business areas understand the expenses they are being charged for, in order to facilitate expense management discussions across teams.
• Lead review of allocation methods at least annually, and ensure that all parties are aligned on expense allocation impacts as part of the decision making process for any new expenses.
  

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field, such as finance or accounting. MBA preferred.
• Extensive experience in Information Technology financial planning and analysis, including budgeting, forecasting, and financial modelling.
• Demonstrated financial data analysis and problem-solving skills to effectively research, analyze and respond to stakeholder questions.
• Strong analytical skills, with a high attention to detail.
• Experience with Apptio, SAP or other BI tools.
• Proven history of building and maintaining strong relationships with business unit leaders and other stakeholders
• Experience in collaborating with cross-functional teams to create and implement financial decision support tools.
• Leadership or supervisory experience is a plus.
• Self-starter with strong organizational and time-management skills, an ability to work with minimal direction, flexibility to adapt to shifting priorities and schedules, handle multiple issues simultaneously, and to manage stressful situations

*Internal Securian Financial job title for this position is Financial Planning & Analysis Sr. Consultant

Securian Financial believes in hybrid work as an integral part of our culture. Associates get the benefit of working both virtually and in our offices. This position requires you to work within a commutable distance (90 minutes) of our Home Office in St. Paul, MN, you'll join us 3 days each week in our offices to collaborate and build relationships. Our policy allows flexibility for the reality of business and personal schedules. #LI-Hybrid #PIQ

For more information regarding Securian's benefits, please review our Benefits page.

This information is not intended to explain all the provisions of coverage available under these plans. In all cases, the plan document dictates coverage and provisions.

Securian Financial Group, Inc. does not discriminate based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital or familial status, pregnancy, disability, genetic information, political affiliation, veteran status, status in regard to public assistance or any other protected status. If you are a job seeker with a disability and require an accommodation to apply for one of our jobs, please contact us by email at Employment@Securian.com, by telephone 651-655-5522 (voice), or 711 (Relay/TTY).

To view our privacy statement click here

To view our legal statement click here