Global Finance Service Governance Director

The mandate

Finance services are being governed through measures that show activity but do not reveal whether control, cost and decision quality are improving together. The standing question for this appointment is how a senior finance team should distinguish healthy service variation from structural failure, and then intervene without recreating operational management in the governance forum.

The adviser will help establish a disciplined executive view of service performance across record-to-report, purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash. That means connecting service levels to controllership consequences: aged reconciling items, unsupported journals, payment exceptions, disputed receivables, close volatility and the true cost of rework. The work is about judgement and challenge, not producing a larger pack.

Two days each week will combine private working sessions with finance process owners, preparation for a monthly service council and a twice-quarterly discussion with the accountable executives. The adviser will frame choices, test management assertions and show where apparently local issues require a cross-process decision. Influence is exercised through evidence, questions and written recommendations only.

The appointment has no line authority, approval rights or substitute ownership for remediation. Management remains responsible for targets, resources, vendor directions and control attestations. The adviser must preserve independence from any provider or implementation firm that could benefit from the recommendations and disclose relevant commercial relationships before work begins.

By the end of nine months, the governance rhythm should be capable of operating without continued dependence on the adviser. The final contribution is therefore a decision history, a calibrated indicator set and a clear method for escalating service risks based on financial exposure rather than presentation quality.

What you will own

• Define a service-governance charter that separates executive decisions, process-owner accountabilities and operational issue management, and secure named ownership for every recurring forum.
• Replace volume-led reporting with a concise indicator architecture linking timeliness, first-time-right performance, control exceptions, economic leakage and stakeholder impact.
• Establish thresholds that trigger watch, intervention or formal remediation status, including the financial evidence required before a status can be downgraded.
• Chair the analytical portion of the first three service councils and leave each meeting with a recorded choice, owner, due date and quantified exposure.
• Challenge cost-to-serve allocations and expose rework or retained-organisation effort that is currently invisible in service-provider productivity claims.
• Develop a cross-process dependency map showing how upstream master-data, approval and billing failures migrate into close and cash outcomes.
• Recommend, but not approve, changes to service levels, retained capabilities, remediation funding and provider incentives.
• Deliver a final governance effectiveness review with unresolved decisions, capability gaps and a 12-month maturity path owned by management.

Candidate qualifications

• Show prior board- or executive-level stewardship of multi-process finance services where operational measures were converted into control and value decisions.
• Provide an example of detecting a misleading green service status and the evidence used to change the accountable executive's response.
• Demonstrate fluency in close, payables, receivables, reconciliations and service economics without relying on a single process specialty.
• Evidence the ability to challenge senior operators constructively while leaving formal accountability and implementation ownership with them.
• Describe a governance design that survived the adviser's departure, including how behaviours and escalation standards were embedded.
• Disclose provider, software, outsourcing or implementation relationships that might create an actual or perceived conflict.
• Bring concise executive writing, quantitative scepticism and experience working across jurisdictions with different control expectations.

Working terms and boundaries

• The retainer covers two days a week, one monthly service council, one preparation clinic and reasonable document review within the agreed cadence.
• Extra board attendance or urgent reviews require written agreement on scope, timing and an additional fee before attendance.
• The adviser will not direct employees, negotiate supplier terms, approve control conclusions or sign financial representations.
• Recommendations will use anonymised process evidence; access to personal or commercially restricted records is limited to what management authorises.
• Any conflicting provider or investor interest must be declared at entry and when circumstances change.

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 5 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-ADV-2026-LON-04.