Principal Director Fee-Service Profitability Analytics — Unit-Cost Integrity

The mandate

A financial-services group needs a defensible unit-cost baseline for fee businesses that count activity differently across operating centres. Current profitability comparisons cannot distinguish genuine service efficiency from inconsistent denominators and unsupported cost allocation. The principal analytics director will hold specialist method accountability and deliver the baseline, allocation rulebook and maintenance workflow for the agreed services, with ongoing budget approval and enterprise transformation remaining outside the engagement.

The four-month engagement starts on 26 October 2026 and reserves three days weekly. On 30 November 2026, milestone one is a reconciled activity and cost-source inventory with data limitations. On 18 January 2027, milestone two is the allocation model and sensitivity book. On 26 February 2027, milestone three is the independently rerun baseline, user guidance and accepted transfer to internal analytical owners.

Acceptance rests with the CFO and operations analytics head. Tests require full reconciliation to the approved cost perimeter, traceable activity definitions and successful recalculation using a withheld reporting period. Owners must reproduce the allocation and explain material movements without consultant assistance. Payment is 25% after the source inventory, 30% after model acceptance and 45% after validated transfer; savings achieved later are not a condition for accepting the defined deliverables.

The sponsor provides ledger extracts, staffing and activity records, a six-person working group and access to service owners. The consultant selects and documents methods but does not direct staff or alter booking policies. Technology replacement, redundancy planning and statutory reporting changes are excluded. New services or additional historical periods require a written scope decision that names additional evidence, acceptance tests and commercial consequences before the project expands.

What you will own

• Produce the first-stage source inventory by reconciling service activity and ledger costs, naming missing or incompatible definitions that must be resolved before an apparently precise unit-cost number can be trusted.
• Establish allocation alternatives that distinguish direct effort, shared support and unused capacity, documenting why each rule is appropriate and which strategic decisions could change under a different defensible treatment.
• Build the second-stage model with controlled assumptions and a sensitivity book, ensuring that every output traces to approved sources or an explicitly labelled estimate rather than hidden spreadsheet judgement.
• Design withheld-period validation that tests reconciliation, activity classification and exception handling, identifying whether internal owners can detect a broken input instead of producing an unexplained profitability movement.
• Write maintenance guidance for refresh, review and change approval, giving service managers a practical way to challenge allocation evidence without silently editing methodology to improve their reported performance.
• Facilitate final acceptance through an independent rerun by the analytical team, recording unresolved data limitations and the decisions for which the baseline is suitable or should not yet be used.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring 12–18 years of strategic or business finance in financial services, with personal responsibility for service profitability, operating-model economics or cost attribution. Show a completed baseline where inconsistent activity definitions were resolved. The requirement is not merely producing an efficiency dashboard; you must demonstrate how the underlying method became reliable enough for a consequential management decision.
• Demonstrate reconciliation and allocation expertise that recognises the difference between direct cost, shared infrastructure and unused capacity. Explain a situation where a defensible alternative rule materially changed the apparent ranking of services. Finance education and analytical competence are essential, together with the ability to make assumptions transparent instead of using model complexity to discourage stakeholder challenge.
• Have facilitated cross-functional agreement where cost allocation affected local targets or executive narratives. Evidence should include the method you used to test disputed inputs and how you documented limitations without preventing all useful decisions. You must be able to distinguish an analytical deliverable from a promised saving that depends on later management action outside the consulting scope.
• Reserve three working days weekly through the four-month calendar, including discovery and validation sessions in Mumbai. Bring experience transferring an analytical model to internal owners, with version control, refresh procedures and acceptance tests. Principal specialist standing requires the judgement to identify scope expansion early and leave methods another professional can reproduce without continued dependence on their original designer.

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-CON-2026-IND-110.