Finance Lead (Safeguarding & Reconciliations)

• Perform daily internal and external safeguarding reconciliations across client ledgers, bank accounts and payment providers; investigate differences and escalate shortfalls promptly.
• Maintain safeguarding calculations, records and supporting evidence, with clear separation of client funds and company money.
• Establish finance procedures, independent checks and approval controls; identify gaps and improve or automate recurring processes.
• Manage client invoicing, fee checks, collections, supplier payments and month-end reconciliations.
• Prepare management accounts and reports on revenue, costs, cash flow, liquidity and capital; support budgets and forecasts.
• Maintain a reporting calendar (what is submitted, how, when and by whom); prepare financial and prudential returns for review and approval.
• Monitor own funds and capital headroom, escalate concerns and support the financial elements of wind-down planning.
• Coordinate finance and safeguarding audit requests, resolve queries with banking partners and keep complete audit trails.

Obligatory

Requirements and skills

Career and experience

• 4–6+ years in finance, including direct responsibility for safeguarding and reconciliations in a UK-regulated EMI or payment institution (essential).

Education

• Accounting qualification (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent) or part-qualified/studying is an advantage; practical EMI experience is the priority.

Industry

• UK-regulated EMI or payment institution (essential); banking, payments or fintech finance teams also valued.

Technical

• Working knowledge of FCA safeguarding requirements, the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and Electronic Money Regulations 2011, capital/own funds requirements and prudential/regulatory returns.

EQWIRE | Job Description

• Advanced Excel (lookups, pivots, large datasets); accounting systems (e.g. Xero, NetSuite); multi-currency accounting.
• Reconciling ledger, bank-statement and payment-provider data; audit trails and evidence.

Skills and attributes

• Organised and proactive; investigates discrepancies and improves processes; meets deadlines.
• Explains issues clearly in English to non-finance colleagues, auditors and banking partners

Preferably
•Start-up or scale-up experience.
•FX or cross-border payments exposure.

• Reliability: official employment from the first day, bonuses, annual employee review (salary review or bonus, feedback on work results)
• Stability: our clients are in different countries, therefore we are ready for any changes in work of any country
• Development: a lot of projects and products, which means increasing expertise in working with different technologies, or even switching to completely new ones for you within the company
• Active corporate life: we participate in thematic conferences and forums in our cool sphere of business, corporate parties in the best restaurants of the city with participation of stars, etc
• Comfort: Offices are in different countries. You can work from anywhere in the world