Interim Head, Strategic Business Finance — Lending Integration

The mandate

Two integrating lending franchises still plan on different profitability and operating-cost assumptions and need a single strategic business-finance owner. Fifteen specialists are producing competent analysis without an executive able to settle methodology and planning priorities. The interim head will hold that functional seat, preventing incompatible forecasts from becoming the basis for resource commitments during the integration's next decision cycle.

The engagement starts on 26 October 2026 and lasts six months without extension. A permanent integration finance head is being recruited concurrently. Exit requires one reconciled planning baseline, an approved assumption dictionary and two completed executive planning reviews using the same portfolio definitions. The successor must be able to trace decisions to their inputs and identify remaining integration uncertainties without recreating the analytical history.

The interim may set planning standards, assign analytical work and approve changes to internal forecast assumptions within the agreed methodology. Credit policy, risk model approval, statutory accounting and material integration investment remain with their authorised owners. The finance head can refuse endorsement of an incomplete case, but cannot use the interim appointment to change loan underwriting or make staffing restructures that have not received executive approval.

The scope is integration business planning and portfolio economics, not the full financial management of the combined institution. Legal merger execution, regulatory submissions and technology platform replacement are excluded. The interim will collaborate with those programmes to understand dependencies, while keeping the finance handover bounded. Success is a repeatable decision process with honest uncertainty, rather than a forecast made artificially tidy by removing inconvenient differences between the two franchises.

What you will own

• Establish a common planning baseline from both franchises' approved results and operating data, documenting the differences in segment definitions, cost attribution and timing that must be resolved before comparison is reliable.
• Decide methodology questions within delegation after consulting risk and treasury owners, preserving their approved specialist inputs and making unresolved differences visible in the finance recommendation instead of averaging them away.
• Lead integrated resource-planning reviews that compare growth and operating alternatives, requiring sponsors to identify execution dependencies and showing which claimed benefits rely on programmes outside the finance team's control.
• Authorise controlled forecast revisions through a versioned assumption register, recording the evidence and decision owner so changing integration expectations do not produce several competing unofficial financial plans.
• Present two complete executive planning cycles with reconciled portfolio measures, testing whether managers can use the framework for real allocation choices rather than simply reproduce a demonstration pack.
• Transfer the functional seat to the permanent head with model documentation, decision history and residual uncertainty ownership, including a practical walkthrough of the next planned review and its escalation requirements.

Candidate qualifications

• Have a 12–18-year banking or financial-services career with substantial strategic-finance or business-planning leadership. Demonstrate experience reconciling economics across merging, integrating or materially reorganising business units. You must identify the methodology decisions you personally owned, rather than describe a broad integration programme in which your involvement was limited to consolidation of others' numbers.
• Bring command of portfolio profitability, cost attribution and long-range planning, with the ability to distinguish finance assumptions from risk or treasury inputs that require independent ownership. Evidence should include a reconciled baseline and an example where comparability could not responsibly be achieved by simple arithmetic. Formal finance training must support technically credible challenge of business cases.
• Have led analytical managers through competing senior stakeholder demands without losing control of assumptions or approval routes. Explain how you resolved a disagreement, documented a limitation and maintained one decision-ready plan. The role requires functional executive judgement under time pressure, but it does not offer authority to redesign credit policy or undertake a permanent organisational restructure independently.
• Be available for the stated six-month onsite assignment, with five working days of weekly coverage. Show a prior handover in which successors could reproduce your planning method and understand why decisions changed. A credible interim must be willing to leave unresolved uncertainty clearly documented rather than claim complete integration merely because a common presentation format has been adopted.

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 11 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-INT-2026-IND-108.