Senior Expense Accountant

Legal & General supports the savings, protection and retirement needs of around 14 million people, through our portfolio of retail and workplace businesses.

Our Retail division helps people enjoy a more colourful retirement, both directly and through their employers, including Lifetime Mortgages, Retirement Interest Only Mortgages and financial advice on our range of lending products.

We are the UK’s number one individual life insurer, and also provide Group Protection products for employers – all helping people to plan for the unexpected. We support home buying through our Mortgage Club – the UK’s largest – and our award-winning Surveying Services team. And our fintech team finds and supports socially useful start-ups and scale-ups working in the workplace, home, insurance and wealth areas.

Joining us means helping create brighter financial futures for all our customers. 

We’re recruiting for a Senior Expense Accountant to join our Retail Finance Function.

The Senior Expense Accountant role is split between two main functions – central expense management and central support services.

The central expense management function offers conventional cost centre accounting support, while the central support services provide centralized accounting services for the Retail Finance community.

What you'll be doing:

• Managing expenses involves the month-end processing of journals, prepayments, and accruals, ensuring adherence to Group Accounting Policies to produce accurate and reliable financial records
• Monitor and report monthly spend in relation to targets. Highlight where and why spend is not tracking to expectations and where possible, identify appropriate mitigations
• Ensure the maintenance of cost centre allocation rules for divisional and product/channel profit and loss statements. Regularly assess these rules for relevance and precision. Emphasize the effects on unit costs for both new and existing business when proposing changes
• Maximise the use of systems to produce accurate monthly expense reports on business expenses for interested stakeholders
• Translate accounting complexities into clear and concise business management summaries and commentaries to assist with educating stakeholders and to encourage their proactive engagement in expense management
• Oversee the quarterly expense forecast and the annual planning cycle for the expense base, coordinating with both senior management and cost centre managers to ensure an accurate representation of commercial plans
• Challenge where appropriate, ensuring a balance between customer and commercial value.  Provide clear narrative and accurate and timely management information to senior management, including highlighting incremental variances, risks and opportunities

Who we're looking for:

• Minimum part qualified accountant
• Good knowledge of the Financial Services industry and the performance metrics used within the industry
• Understanding of cost management, allocation and profit measurement (Value Added Management), planning and forecasting cycle, financial approval procedures/processes and monthly expenditure reporting and analysis processes, and alternative cross-charging methodologies and behavioural implications
• Advanced knowledge in the use of spreadsheets, databases, and analysis tools
• Ability to design, develop and maintain complex financial models
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain financial items in commercial terms, to create clear and concise commentary
• Cost management experience
• Systems knowledge useful - Office software packages: such as MS Office, MS Excel, Forecasting software: Anaplan, MI Support: PowerBI, Accounting software: Oracle Financials

Whatever your role, we reward performance and behaviour with a package that looks after all the things that are important to you. Here are some of the benefits we offer: 

• The opportunity to participate in our annual, performance-related bonus plan and valuable share schemes  
• Generous pension contribution  
• Life assurance   
• Private medical insurance (permanent employees only) 
• At least 25 days holiday, plus public holidays, 26 days after 2 years’ service. There’s also the option to buy and sell holiday 
• Competitive family leave 
• Participate in our electric car scheme, which offers employees the option to hire a brand-new electric car through tax efficient salary sacrifice 
• There are the many discounts we offer – both for our own products and at a range of high street stores and online   
• In 2023, some of our workspaces were redesigned. Our offices are great spaces to connect and collaborate and have your wellbeing at the heart

Legal & General is a leading financial services group and major global investor, named Britain’s Most Admired Company in 2023, for the second year running. Rated top in our sector and top for inspirational leadership, we have a strong heritage and an exciting future.

We aim to build a better society for the long term by investing our customers’ money in things that make life better for everyone.

If you join us, you’ll be part of a welcoming culture, with opportunities to collaborate with people of diverse backgrounds, views and experiences. Guided by leaders with integrity who care about your future and wellbeing. Empowered through initiatives which support people to develop their careers and excel.

We strive to be open, mindful and inclusive, so are always willing to discussing flexible working arrangements and reasonable accommodations for candidates with specific needs.

If you’re open to find out more, we'd love to hear from you.