Finance Committee Adviser — Automotive Commodity and Interest Capital-Risk Appetite

The mandate

An automotive finance committee approves separate commodity and interest protection policies but repeatedly struggles to judge their combined demand on capital and liquidity. Operating weakness, repricing delays and protection-related collateral can coincide even when each individual policy appears conservative. The adviser will challenge the committee's risk appetite and stress assumptions, helping directors understand which combinations the business can absorb and which require a different cushion or staged commitment.

The ten-month term starts on 26 October 2026. Four reserved days each month cover stress-case reading, a written committee challenge and discussion with the CFO and treasury sponsor. Quarterly committee attendance and its preparation are included in the retainer. A supported off-cycle stress question receives a substantive note within four business days; missing inputs are identified within two. New modelling or a wider investigation requires agreed additional scope rather than an unlimited response promise.

The adviser has no line authority over treasury specialists and no executive responsibility for capital protection or hedge outcomes. Management retains transaction decisions, operating forecasts and execution, while directors decide appetite and material policy changes. The contribution is an independent examination of relationships between the risks, including when an economically protective position creates an immediate cash demand. It does not provide an investment recommendation based on an anticipated market direction.

The committee chair reviews the contribution during month eight and recommends any renewal to the board before expiry. Renewed work requires written board approval of a distinct term no longer than twelve months, with a fresh retainer and reserved capacity reflecting the risk-appetite decisions outstanding. Up to two unrelated, non-competing engagements may run concurrently if the reserved days and response window remain protected. Interests in proposed counterparties, derivative providers or competing automotive programmes must be disclosed before case access. Supplier commissions and paid advocacy for a protection product are incompatible with this role's independent committee challenge.

The committee will receive reasoned alternatives, not a consultant-operated risk book. Accounting specialists retain their conclusions and legal advisers validate collateral or contractual rights. The adviser may question whether those conclusions answer the board's actual liquidity concern but cannot replace them. Success is a clearer appetite decision and an explicit account of the conditions that would trigger management reconsideration, with unresolved scenario limitations preserved rather than presented as a precise prediction of the next downturn.

What you will own

• Challenge stress cases that combine commodity movement, interest cost and delayed operating recovery, asking sponsors to expose shared assumptions instead of presenting isolated sensitivities as complete evidence of resilience.
• Test the relationship between economic protection and collateral cash needs, highlighting cases where a favourable ultimate offset does not fund an earlier liquidity requirement at the relevant entity.
• Shape appetite alternatives around explicit capital cushions and management triggers, comparing staged commitment or reduced concentration without approving a policy, allocating funds or directing a treasury transaction.
• Question apparent diversification where several protections or funding sources depend on the same counterparty, market access or operating forecast, pressing the committee to examine plausible joint failure.
• Review downside action plans for reversibility and authorised decision routes, identifying choices whose practical timing is slower than the stress scenario assumes or whose execution depends on unresolved specialist evidence.
• Advise the chair on scenario limitations and post-event learning, distinguishing a genuinely improved appetite framework from hindsight explanations that merely make the original decision appear more informed.

Candidate qualifications

• Explain a commodity, interest or combined treasury stress case that changed an executive view of acceptable risk. Automotive or related manufacturing evidence should show operating consequences, protection economics and personal contribution to the governance discussion. Selection will examine how you separated a plausible scenario from a forecast, and what directors could decide differently after your analysis rather than simply reviewing a larger set of sensitivities.
• Have senior capital markets, treasury or comparable finance responsibility in an 18–22-year career, with rigorous financial training or equivalent proven depth. You must understand collateral timing, cash accessibility and capital consequences while preserving accounting and legal specialists' qualified conclusions. Advisory standing requires the ability to challenge a technically detailed management paper without claiming authority to execute trades or determine independent professional opinions.
• Demonstrate committee writing that makes joint dependencies and decision alternatives intelligible. Describe a position that appeared economically protective but created an awkward cash requirement, and the conditions you recommended management examine. The engagement needs disciplined uncertainty, including recognition that a model's comfortable result may depend on operating recovery, funding access or contractual timing that has not been adequately supported.
• Confirm four protected monthly days, included quarterly attendance and the stated off-cycle response capacity alongside your other engagements. Disclose counterparty interests, supplier remuneration and competing programme exposure before confidential access. The adviser must remain willing to recommend recusal or decline a case where independence cannot be preserved, and accept a management decision different from the advice without acquiring responsibility for its subsequent execution.

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 13 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-ADV-2026-IND-270.