Finance Operating Resilience Advisory Director

The mandate

The adviser will help finance leaders determine whether critical finance outcomes can continue through plausible people, process, data, service or access disruption. The standing question is not whether plans exist; it is whether minimum finance services, authority and evidence can operate when normal dependencies fail. Advice will focus on close, cash, payment, billing and reporting continuity.

Two days each week will support a fortnightly resilience clinic, review of selected critical-service evidence and one executive exercise each quarter. The director will challenge dependency assumptions, minimum service levels, decision authority, manual alternatives, recovery order and return-to-normal conditions. Operating leaders retain responsibility for plans and response.

The adviser will require end-to-end service maps. A backup system does not ensure continuity if data, approvers, bank routes, specialist judgement or reconciliation evidence remain unavailable. Manual contingencies must show capacity, segregation, privacy, evidence and how accumulated work is reconciled after recovery. Tests should expose failure rather than demonstrate rehearsed success.

The appointment has no line authority and no incident command, access, payment or control-waiver authority. The adviser will not attend live incidents unless separately requested and agreed. Management owns risk acceptance, testing, remediation and invocation. Provider interests relevant to continuity, recovery or finance services must be disclosed.

By month six, finance should have credible minimum-service definitions, dependency maps, exercised contingencies and an executive residual-risk view. The final advice will identify untested assumptions and choices consciously deferred, without certifying business continuity or control effectiveness.

What you will own

• Define minimum finance outcomes and maximum tolerable interruption for selected close, cash, payment, billing and reporting services.
• Map people, authority, data, access, provider, location, banking and evidence dependencies end to end.
• Challenge single points of failure and recovery assumptions that exist only at component level.
• Design executive exercises with credible loss of normal data, approvers, access or service capacity.
• Test manual contingencies for volume, segregation, evidence, privacy, reconciliation and exit.
• Recommend recovery sequence based on financial and control consequence rather than system priority alone.
• Record residual risk and deferred choices for management acceptance without implying certification.
• Leave a finance-owned testing cadence and remediation decision method.

Candidate qualifications

• Show senior finance resilience work grounded in critical outcomes rather than generic continuity documentation.
• Provide an example where a component-level recovery plan failed because an end-to-end dependency remained unavailable.
• Demonstrate testing of manual finance contingencies for capacity, control evidence and return-to-normal reconciliation.
• Evidence executive exercises that revealed uncomfortable failure rather than confirming a scripted success.
• Show influence without incident command, payment or control-waiver authority.
• Describe how management explicitly accepted or remediated residual finance continuity risk.
• Disclose relevant continuity, recovery, banking or service-provider interests.

Working terms and boundaries

• The retainer covers two days a week, a fortnightly clinic, quarterly executive exercise and agreed evidence review.
• Live incident attendance, remediation delivery or added exercises require a separate written scope and fee.
• The adviser cannot invoke plans, command incidents, approve payments, grant access or waive controls.
• Management owns testing, response, remediation and risk acceptance.
• Relevant provider interests require continuing disclosure throughout the six-month appointment.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 9 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-ADV-2026-YVR-48.