Group Chief Financial Officer — Digital Marketplace

The mandate

The marketplace has grown a large loyalty membership through points, tier benefits, partner offers and targeted incentives. Participation is high, but the economic picture is fragmented. Marketing evaluates engagement, category teams focus on transaction lift, and finance estimates points liability and redemption using portfolio averages. Partner-funded benefits are not always separated from company subsidy, while members who appear valuable may carry high service, return or incentive costs. The proposed redesign will alter customer behaviour and a material balance-sheet obligation at the same time.

The Group Chief Financial Officer will lead the financial architecture for that redesign and strengthen the wider marketplace control environment. The remit covers planning and performance, controllership, treasury, tax, investor or lender relations, commercial finance, capital allocation, risk partnership and financial data integrity. Product and commercial leaders own the loyalty proposition; the CFO must ensure decisions are grounded in cohort economics, accounting consequence, cash timing and evidence that can withstand board and audit scrutiny.

This planned replacement comes as the marketplace is moving from growth by transaction volume towards durable contribution and repeat. The board wants a CFO who can distinguish investment from subsidy, but it does not want finance to optimise away the customer relationship. The appointee must be willing to fund a long-term benefit when the value hypothesis is credible and equally willing to stop a popular feature whose cost or liability cannot be justified.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in London, the CFO will oversee approximately 1,225 employees and material partners across the United Kingdom and a wider international region. The finance perimeter includes group and regional controllership, planning, commercial finance, treasury, tax, procurement governance and finance transformation. Marketplace operations also involve payment processors, sellers, loyalty partners and service providers whose records influence revenue, cash and customer obligations.

Loyalty accounting is only one part of the complexity. The platform must determine when it acts as principal or agent across different offers, reconcile seller settlements and customer refunds, safeguard or segregate funds where required, and account for promotional consideration supplied by multiple parties. Cross-border trade adds currency, indirect tax, customs and payment timing. The CFO must bring these flows into a controlled and understandable operating model.

Member economics require careful cohort treatment. A customer may earn in one category, redeem in another and use a partner benefit outside the marketplace. Changes to expiry, transfer, tier or redemption can alter breakage assumptions and customer trust. The redesign must therefore be modelled through behaviour and obligation, not treated as a simple change in marketing cost.

First-year agenda

The first hundred days will establish a reconciled loyalty and marketplace baseline. The CFO will trace point issuance, partner funding, redemption, expiry, refunds, reversals and the related accounting entries. They will examine cohort contribution after acquisition, incentives, returns, service and fulfilment, while testing the data quality and assumptions supporting liability estimates. Material manual adjustments and unreconciled partner balances will be surfaced with owners and closure plans.

The executive will then create a financial decision model for loyalty propositions. Each proposed benefit or tier change will show incremental behaviour, company and partner funding, operational cost, liability timing, downside cases and the evidence required after launch. The model must distinguish customers whose activity shifted from those whose demand was merely discounted. Longer-term brand or relationship value can be included, but its assumptions must be explicit.

Working with product and commercial leadership, the CFO will establish test-and-learn guardrails. Experiments should predefine eligible cohorts, accounting treatment, spend limits, success measures and stopping conditions. Changes that affect earned value, expiry or customer rights will receive legal and communications review before approval. Finance will monitor without becoming a release bottleneck for low-risk tests inside agreed boundaries.

Marketplace cash and control will run as a parallel priority. The CFO will improve settlement reconciliation, refund and chargeback visibility, seller balance assurance, currency exposure and cash forecasting. Principal-agent conclusions, indirect tax and revenue recognition will be documented at the level of actual commercial models. New offers may not scale while their cash path and accounting ownership remain ambiguous.

By the end of year one, the board should have approved a loyalty architecture with transparent economics and accounting, resolved the highest-risk reconciliation gaps and made several benefit choices based on measured behaviour. Forecasts should bridge transactions to contribution, liability and cash. Finance should spend less time creating after-the-fact explanations and more time improving decisions before commitment.

Leadership responsibilities

The CFO will be a full enterprise partner and an independent steward. They will lead board and audit-committee discussions on performance, liquidity, liability, controls and capital, clearly separating actuals, forecasts and management judgement. When information is incomplete, the uncertainty and its decision effect must be stated rather than hidden inside a point estimate.

The executive will reshape finance capability around marketplace economics. Commercial finance teams need fluency in cohorts, partner terms and experimentation; controllership teams need deeper connection to product flows; and treasury must understand settlement and customer-refund patterns. The CFO will assess leaders, strengthen succession and reduce key-person dependence in complex accounting and reconciliation.

External relationships may include auditors, banks, payment providers, tax authorities, investors and loyalty partners. The CFO will maintain constructive transparency while defending the enterprise's position with evidence. Material partner disputes should be visible early enough to protect both customer obligations and commercial leverage.

Measures of success

The board will review contribution by cohort and offer, repeat behaviour, incremental redemption value, partner funding, loyalty liability accuracy, forecast-to-actual breakage and benefit cost. Wider marketplace measures include take-rate quality, net revenue, seller and customer balances, refunds, chargebacks, free cash flow, liquidity and return on invested capital.

Control progress will be assessed through reconciliation timeliness, close quality, audit findings, manual adjustments, settlement exceptions and tax certainty. Capital decisions will be tracked against their original hypotheses. Gross merchandise value or membership growth without a credible bridge to contribution and obligation will not be treated as financial success.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring at least 28 years of finance leadership in marketplaces, retail, payments, consumer platforms, loyalty or another transaction-intensive international business. They must have held group-level accountability for controllership, planning, cash and board reporting, and should understand principal-agent judgements, customer funds and complex partner settlements.

The board will look for direct experience rebuilding loyalty or subscription economics. Candidates should explain how they estimated and governed a points or benefit liability, separated incremental behaviour from discount, and changed a proposition after cohort or accounting evidence. They must also have led material finance capability and control improvement without losing commercial pace.

The successful CFO will combine technical authority with curiosity about customer behaviour. They should be able to challenge a product leader without retreating into accounting language, and challenge finance colleagues when excessive caution blocks a well-bounded test. Experience across several tax and regulatory jurisdictions is preferred.

Compensation and appointment terms

Base remuneration is expected at GBP 350,000–520,000, with annual incentive and long-term participation linked to cash, control and durable enterprise value. Exact positioning will reflect the appointee's public or private market experience, technical scope and current package. Relocation and responsible treatment of forfeited awards will be considered during final negotiations.

Confidentiality

The marketplace is unnamed because the CFO transition, loyalty changes and partner economics are not public. Detailed financial and product information will be disclosed progressively after identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Candidates must not provide member-level data, audit findings, settlement records or unreleased loyalty plans from another organisation.