Finance Manager

Job id: 086505. Salary: £43,205 – £47,978 pro rota, per annum, including London Weighting Allowance.

Posted: 18 March 2024. Closing date: 01 April 2024.

Business unit: Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine. Department: Life Course & Pop Sci School Office.

Contact details:Piera Freccero. [email protected]

Location: Guy’s Campus. Category: Professional & Support Services.

Job description

King’s Global Health Partnerships (KGHP) aims to improve health outcomes in five African countries– Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Zambia, DR Congo and Gambia – working with local partners and drawing on the skills of volunteers from the NHS and King’s College London. This is a fantastic opportunity to lead the development and management of finance systems for an innovative and impactful health systems strengthening programme.

This role will be based within Kings Finance Team and will oversee financial management of KGHP’s restricted and unrestricted funds, leading on financial planning, budgeting and donor compliance across our programmes.  You will support Partnerships staff, providing hands-on support as necessary to ensure that internal controls and financial management processes are in place, in order to meet financial, contractual, statutory and legal responsibilities.

The appointee will lead on the development of KGHP’s financial systems and reporting in line with developments from KCL’s finance team.  You will be able to deliver change in processes by building effective relationships with the Finance team and KGHP staff in London and in Africa, as well as building relationships with teams across King’s College London, ensuring coherence and consistency of approach and compliance with financial policies and processes.

This post will be offered on an a fixed term contract until 31st July 2025.

This is a part-time post – 80% full time equivalent.

Key responsibilities

Financial management, compliance and control

• Manage flows of funding to in-country programmes and partners, including forecast-based transfers and reconciliation
• Support the management of in-country finance staff
• Ensure project-specific financial record keeping; review partner financial reports, proactively raising issues with the project budget holder
• Oversee all international grants and contracts and ensure the timely submission of accurate financial grant reporting, including analysis of exchange rate gains and losses
• Lead and manage external audits, ensuring that recommendations arising from external audits are effectively addressed
• Support capacity building programmes workshops for local partners in Africa, enabling them to effectively implement and monitor statutory and institutional grants
• Work with wider finance teams to ensure income and expenditure is aligned to KCL’s wider aims and ambitions

Budget development and oversight

• Work closely with programmes teams to develop proposal and programme budgets which ensure cost recovery and sustainable growth, ensuring appropriate rigour and accuracy. Ensure that match funding requirements for grants are strictly monitored
• Work closely with budget holders to ensure they have good working knowledge of their budgets, conducting regular meetings to understand and explain variances
• Maintain full oversight of KGHP’s finances, ensuring that unrestricted and restricted income and expenditure remains in line with approved budgets
• Provide monthly and quarterly reports and analysis to the KGHP Head of Programs and Senior Management Team to keep them informed of KGHP’s financial position and areas of risk
• Produce an annual statement of accounts for KGHP

Financial processes and systems development

• Improve and maintain systems for financial records, reporting and financial controls in accordance with auditing standards and accounting principles
• Train and develop Partnerships Finance staff overseas and in London in financial oversight and business management; ensure thorough inductions to finance systems for new Partnerships staff
• Ensure that guidance on reporting, budgeting and compliance to internal budget holders and other relevant staff members is clear and well communicated
• Develop and implement an approach to full cost recovery, cost attribution/allocation; reserves policy and management plan; and resource allocation policy, including policy on the application of unrestricted funds

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

Skills, knowledge, and experience

Essential criteria

Educated to degree level

Qualified or part qualified accountant or equivalent (CIMA, ACA, ACCA) or equivalent experience

Highly competent in Excel, able to build and maintain sophisticated templates and databases

Experience of financial management of large, multi-partner projects in the international development sector

Experience of developing and maintaining financial systems in global settings

Experience of capacity development of non-finance colleagues on financial management

Strong communication skills, both written and verbal, and ability to communicate complex financial and contractual issues to non-finance colleagues

Committed to equality, diversity and inclusion, actively addressing areas of potential bias

Desirable criteria

Experience of QuickBooks or similar accounting packages

Experience of Business World / Unit 4

Further information

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

King’s Global Health Partnerships

King’s Global Health Partnerships works with health facilities, academic institutions and governments to strengthen health systems and improve the quality of care in four countries: Somaliland, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. We bring together health, academic and international development expertise from King’s College London, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and our international partners to:

• Educate, train and support healthcare workers
• Strengthen healthcare and training institutions
• Enhance national health policies and systems

We connect UK and African health professionals, providing training, mentoring and hands-on support; and undertake collaborative research to inform policy and practice. We also support our partners by providing access to funding, networks and development opportunities. Through these long-term partnerships and our global volunteering scheme we promote skills and knowledge exchange, and mutual learning that contribute to building a stronger health workforce and improved quality of healthcare both internationally and in the UK. KGHP is based within the School of Life Course and Population Sciences.

More information:  https://www.kcl.ac.uk/kghp

The School of Life Course & Population Sciences

The School of Life Course & Population Sciences is one of six Schools that make up the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine at King’s College London. The School unites over 400 experts in women and children’s health, nutritional sciences, population health and the molecular genetics of human disease. Our research links the causes of common health problems to life’s landmark stages, treating life, disease and healthcare as a continuum. We are interdisciplinary by nature and this innovative approach works: 91 per cent of our research submitted to the Subjects Allied to Medicine (Pharmacy, Nutritional Sciences and Women’s Health cluster) for REF was rated as world-leading or internationally excellent. We use this expertise to teach the next generation of health professionals and research scientists. Based across King’s Denmark Hill, Guy’s, St Thomas’ and Waterloo campuses, our academic programme of teaching, research and clinical practice is embedded across five Departments.

More information:  https://www.kcl.ac.uk/slcps