Overview
Head of Finance – Life & Pensions Jobs in Letterkenny, County Donegal, Ireland at Methodius IT Recruitment
Title: Head of Finance – Life & Pensions
Company: Methodius IT Recruitment
Location: Letterkenny, County Donegal, Ireland
Join a team that's shaping the future of financial operations. Our client is seeking an experienced Head of Finance to join their growing team in Letterkenny. This is an exciting opportunity for a qualified finance professional to lead Accounting and Financial Operations for a major national client within the Life & Pensions sector.
This is a key leadership role where you'll drive operational excellence, ensure robust financial controls, and lead a high-performing finance team. You'll work closely with internal stakeholders, clients, and operational teams to deliver accurate financial reporting, improve processes, and support strategic business objectives.
If you're passionate about finance operations, continuous improvement, and developing people, this could be the ideal next step in your career.
The Opportunity
As Head of Finance, you will be responsible for overseeing the Accounting and Financial Operations function, ensuring accurate and timely financial information is delivered through a well-controlled month-end close process.
Working within a sub-ledger to General Ledger operating model, you will lead the delivery of Trial Balance outputs and management accounting support for Life & Pensions activities. This role focuses on operational finance and financial control and does not include statutory accounts preparation or external financial reporting.
You'll also play a pivotal role in strengthening financial processes, improving controls, supporting change initiatives, and acting as a trusted finance partner for both clients and internal stakeholders.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the delivery of month-end close activities, ensuring Trial Balance outputs are completed accurately and within agreed deadlines.
- Oversee the preparation and posting of month-end journals, including accruals, prepayments, reclassifications, corrections and adjustments.
- Produce management accounts, supporting schedules and meaningful variance analysis.
- Manage reconciliations across sub-ledger and General Ledger environments, ensuring reconciling items are investigated and resolved within agreed SLAs.
- Own interface controls between operational systems and the General Ledger, ensuring completeness and accuracy of financial data.
- Support accounting activities relating to contributions, transfers, refunds, benefit payments and administration charges.
- Investigate transaction exceptions, financial discrepancies and interface issues, identifying root causes and implementing corrective actions.
- Act as the primary finance contact for client queries relating to reconciliations, month-end balances and financial reporting.
- Prepare clear, professional responses to finance-related queries, translating technical information into business-friendly language.
- Maintain strong governance through robust documentation, reconciliation evidence, SOPs and control frameworks.
- Drive continuous improvement initiatives, including process optimisation, automation opportunities and enhanced reporting.
- Support internal and external audit requirements, ensuring compliance with established financial controls.
- Work closely with IT, change teams and system vendors to resolve finance feed issues and support testing for system enhancements.
- Lead, coach and develop junior finance team members, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration and continuous improvement.
About You
We're looking for a commercially minded finance professional with strong technical expertise and proven leadership experience in a fast-paced financial environment.
Essential Experience
- Qualified Accountant (ACCA, CPA or equivalent).
- Significant experience within Finance and Accounting, ideally in a financial services environment.
- Strong background in Trial Balance production and management accounting within a business-as-usual finance function.
- Proven experience preparing journals, reconciliations and month-end reporting.
- Experience working within sub-ledger to General Ledger environments.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to investigate and resolve financial discrepancies.
- Advanced Microsoft Excel skills, including Pivot Tables, Lookups and data analysis (Power Query is advantageous).
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with experience supporting both clients and senior business stakeholders.
- Highly organised, with the ability to manage multiple priorities while delivering high-quality outputs to tight deadlines.
Desirable Experience
- Experience within the Irish Life & Pensions industry.
- Knowledge of Oracle Financials.
- Understanding of Life & Pensions transaction flows, including contributions, transfers, benefits and fees.
- Experience working in high-volume transaction processing environments.
- Knowledge of suspense account management.
- Experience supporting UAT, finance system changes or finance feed enhancements.
Why Apply?
This is an excellent opportunity to join a forward-thinking organisation where you'll have the chance to:
- Lead a critical finance function supporting a major national client.
- Influence financial processes and drive continuous improvement initiatives.
- Develop and mentor a talented finance team.
- Work collaboratively with senior stakeholders across finance, operations and technology.
- Build your career within a dynamic and evolving financial services environment.
Benefits include:Annual bonus Scheme. Contributory Pension Scheme. Private Medical Scheme. Life Assurance. Long Term Disability. Employee Assistance Scheme. Annual Leave – 22 days in a financial year (FY) + 10 public holidays. Continuous Learning & Development. Lunch & Learns. Additional perks including company discounts, on-site parking, bike-to-work scheme and others. Access to extensive training and certification resources
Letterkenny, onsite Full time
Type: Permanent | Eligibility: Must be eligible to work in Ireland or the EU
For further details or to express interest, please contact David Coyle at 01 6351748 or via email at [email protected].
