Expense Governance and Control Design Director

The mandate

This five-month project will redesign expense governance from policy intent through submission, approval, payment, accounting and exception consequence. The purpose is not to rewrite wording or launch a broad cost campaign. It is to make legitimate spending easier to process correctly, high-risk behaviour harder to conceal and recurring exceptions visible to accountable leaders.

Month one will produce an evidence baseline using anonymised transaction cohorts, approval paths, repeat exceptions, late submissions, manual adjustments and post-payment findings. Month two converts priority risks into control journeys and policy decisions. Months three and four pilot redesigned routes. Month five validates results and hands over the operating and assurance method.

Five artifacts govern acceptance: the evidenced exception taxonomy, decision-and-control matrix, redesigned expense journeys, two-cycle pilot pack, and final governance handbook with 90-day assurance plan. Privacy and proportionality are acceptance conditions. The work must not expose personal details unnecessarily or impose the highest control burden on every low-risk expense.

Management will provide authorised, minimised data; current policy and control material; approval authorities; and access to finance, people, legal and operational owners. The director can design rules, controls and pilot methods but cannot investigate named individuals, impose disciplinary outcomes, alter tax treatment or make production configuration changes.

The Chief Accounting Officer accepts the project when pilots demonstrate fewer repeat exceptions, clearer approval accountability, timely evidence and no material increase in inappropriate reimbursement delay. Investigations, system implementation, historical recovery and policy decisions outside the agreed expense perimeter remain excluded and are recorded for designated owners.

What you will own

• Build an anonymised exception taxonomy distinguishing error, ambiguity, unsupported claim, approval weakness, repeat behaviour and control circumvention.
• Trace priority expense journeys from incurrence to accounting and post-payment review, identifying where evidence or authority becomes ineffective.
• Design proportional controls by risk, amount, pattern and approver context rather than a universal burden.
• Clarify policy decisions and approval responsibilities, including consequences for late, incomplete and repeatedly exceptional submissions.
• Pilot redesigned routes over two representative cycles and measure recurrence, cycle time, rejection quality and control evidence.
• Create privacy-conscious management information that shows patterns without broadcasting personal details.
• Recommend policy and process changes; management retains investigation, disciplinary, tax and production authority.
• Deliver a governance handbook, assurance tests, residual-risk register and owner-led 90-day continuation plan.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate expense-control redesign grounded in transaction and approval evidence rather than policy wording alone.
• Show how you distinguished misunderstanding, process friction and intentional circumvention without taking over an investigation.
• Provide an example of reducing exception recurrence while avoiding disproportionate delay for low-risk legitimate expense.
• Bring command of approval authority, evidence, reimbursement, accounting, privacy and post-payment control interfaces.
• Evidence use of anonymised or minimised data in sensitive behavioural analysis.
• Describe a live pilot with balanced acceptance measures, including both control quality and employee experience.
• Show fixed-project discipline where investigation or technology work sat outside the agreed boundary.

Working terms and boundaries

• Five monthly milestones at four days a week cover baseline, control design, journey design, pilot and handover.
• The Chief Accounting Officer accepts outputs against evidence, proportionality, privacy, pilot performance and owner readiness.
• Management supplies authorised minimised data, policies, authorities, control descriptions and named decision owners.
• Individual investigations, discipline, tax determinations, historical recovery and production changes are excluded.
• Scope changes require a written artifact, timeline, acceptance and fee agreement before work begins.

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 10 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-CON-2026-HKG-25.