Finance Business Partner

As a Finance Business Partner within the Central Route, you will work and partner with multiple key stakeholders to provide proactive, value add finance support and accounting advise.

In this role, you will mainly be supporting with Opex.

About the role (External)

Day to day you will be…

· Leading and providing financial advice and guidance to senior budget holders in understanding the impact of the period results and forecasts against budges so they can understand their business better.

· Being the expert in the function on accounting practices and advise on financial results and forecasts for budget holders, including preparing period accruals, transfers and adjustments to validate accounts are reflective, relevant.

· Managing corporate governance throughout the cost centres they manage, conducting deep dives and reviewing compliance with financial regulations to protect the business from legal or negative consequences.

· Delivering expert and accurate business review information and reporting, and highlight any significant issues with financial and other business results to enable informed decision making by the business area.

· Engaging and influencing senior members of the team to help them understand their financial position and use professional expertise to guide in initiatives to improve business performance

· Build bottom up, detailed plans to manage and develop the production of business plans and budgets to enable good corporate governance and value add analysis for senior leaders

· Identifying and proactively managing commercial risks, including the financial suitability of new customers or suppliers reducing the potential risk impact on the business area and influencing decision makers.

· Managing the performance of central accounting functions to deliver for the cost centre area to enable an efficiently and effective accounting service.

· Collating, investigating and making recommendation for investment appraisals and business case analysis to aid business decisions.

· Modelling and analysing cost base and identify and drive opportunities and efficiencies to achieve area targets.

· Demonstrate strong understanding of business needs and relevant application of accounting standards

· Membership (Or working towards a membership) of a relevant accounting body (CIMA/ACCA)

· Expert knowledge and experience of creating and maintaining accounts and annual budget

· Significant experience within relevant finance disciplines

· Strong excel skills and use of data manipulation

· Strong interpersonal and communication skills

· Ability to interpret technical accounting regulations into everyday language

· Demonstrable effective influencing skills at a senior level

· Significant understanding of financial control and risk

· Excellent technical finance and accounting knowledge

It's not mandatory to have the below, but it would be desirable to have:

· Understanding of project management principles and experience of managing complex projects

· Membership of a relevant accounting body

· Extensive experience of Oracle based systems

· Degree or equivalent qualification in finance and accounting or business management or experience

Network Rail operates and maintains the railway infrastructure 24/7 365 days a year.

Our passengers and freight users are at the heart of everything we do. We help connect people to their friends and families and get goods to their destination safely and efficiently. We're an organisation where people matter. When you're part of our team, you matter to us and you matter to millions.

We're continuing to build a more diverse and inclusive organisation which is representative of the passengers we serve. To do this, it's essential we become a more open, diverse and inclusive organisation, harnessing the skills and expertise of all our people and attracting the best talent to help us have a safe, accessible railway for everyone. We're an inclusive employer of choice and we welcome applications from everyone.

Our Route

Central route is at the heart of Britain's railway. The route covers a major part of the national rail network and is a key commuter line in and out of Birmingham, with hundreds of thousands of passengers, and thousands of tonnes of freight carried within our route each week. Within our route is the Chiltern Main Line between London Marylebone and the West Midlands, the Snow Hill line from Stratford-upon-Avon to Worcester, the Cross City line in Birmingham, and lines to other cities including Wolverhampton, Coventry, Walsall, and Oxford.

We are home to Birmingham New Street station, the busiest station outside of London with more than 170,000 passengers using it every day.