Financial Services Finance COE Footprint and Accountability Adviser

The mandate

The operating-model committee's standing question is which finance activities belong in a shared centre and which require retained proximity to entity judgement. The adviser will challenge footprint choices through accountability, evidence access and practical service risk. This is not a mandate to favour centralisation automatically or approve a migration before its control consequences are understood.

Four days monthly cover a selected service-boundary review, a discussion with retained and centre owners and committee attendance. The meeting is included. A footprint question receives acknowledgement within two working days, followed by a documented opinion within four once the agreed service and control evidence is available. Running migration or managing service queues is outside the retainer.

The nine-month advice term begins on 19 October 2026. The committee chair will consider renewal against forthcoming boundary choices and evidence that the initial challenge improved accountability. No line authority over retained or centre staff passes to the adviser, who carries no executive responsibility for migration or finance sign-off. Internal leaders retain those obligations.

The sponsor supplies proposed activity boundaries, service evidence, approval routes and entity-control needs. Advice must distinguish where a task is performed from who remains accountable for its financial conclusion. Location economics should include evidence access, specialist judgement, resilience and transition dependency rather than compare labour cost in isolation.

Concurrent non-competing assignments are allowed. Relationships with an incumbent provider, competing service centre or bidder whose proposal is under review may create a conflict and require disclosure. Migration execution, employment restructuring and regulatory representation are excluded. The committee wants an independent financial-services operating perspective without turning the adviser into a shadow service executive or a procurement advocate.

What you will own

• Challenge activity placement against judgement, source access and approval needs, pressing sponsors to distinguish transferable preparation from accountability that remains with an entity owner.
• Test service value after resilience, specialist capacity and retained review effort, advising where apparent location savings merely move cost or risk elsewhere.
• Shape footprint options that preserve transition flexibility, identifying which boundaries can be piloted before a broader commitment changes the control operating model.
• Examine concentration risk in evidence and expertise, highlighting where one centre or provider becomes an untested dependency for multiple accountable entities.
• Press owners to retain decision and escalation routes after migration, preventing service convenience from obscuring who approves the underlying finance judgement.
• Review proposed acceptance evidence for the boundary change, advising why a met service deadline does not alone prove the retained control can operate.
• Record independent advice and conflict limits in a footprint note, leaving migration, staffing and binding operating-model approvals with authorised finance leaders.

Candidate qualifications

• Evidence senior financial-services finance or service-governance work involving retained and shared-centre boundaries. Explain an activity-placement decision, the accountability issue identified and how the preferred design changed.
• Demonstrate control judgement beyond a location-cost comparison. Candidates should describe evidence access or specialist capacity that materially affected whether a finance activity could be transferred safely.
• Provide a footprint or operating-model case that considered resilience and concentration. Explain the dependency exposed and the staged or alternative option recommended before a broader commitment.
• Show advisory independence from providers and service bidders. Describe conflict disclosure or recusal, including how confidential operating-model information remained protected and how your advice stayed separate from migration instructions.
• Be able to sustain four reserved days monthly and produce a source-linked accountability recommendation. Proven financial-services scope matters more than an assumed global executive title. Candidates should show how a retained reviewer was tested after a service boundary changed, what evidence remained unavailable and why a successful transfer of processing did not automatically establish effective entity-control approval. Explain how the footprint note treats an activity with transferable preparation but unavailable retained evidence. Show the limited design that remains supportable, the prerequisite that prevents wider migration and the evidence needed before the committee can rely on the proposed approval route.

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 9 October 2026. Mandate reference PCT-ADV-2026-IND-20.