Global Business Services Finance Director

The mandate

The Global Business Services Finance Director will lead finance services as an accountable operating capability rather than a collection of migrated tasks. The appointment owns service integrity, talent, controls, economics and continuous improvement across finance process towers, while business and controllership leaders retain policy and balance accountability. The distinction must be made operational, not left in governance language.

In the first 100 days, the director will validate the service perimeter, assess leadership depth, expose hidden retained work and establish a fact base for quality, timeliness, control exceptions and cost to serve. By month six, each process tower should have a credible service promise, operational control rhythm and improvement backlog tied to finance outcomes. By month twelve, performance should be stable across peak cycles and successor capacity should exist below the director.

This leader has authority over the finance-services organisation, its operating budget, capability model, work allocation, service methods and internal performance consequences. The director will negotiate evidence-based service commitments and may decline work that lacks process ownership, readiness or an agreed control model. Policy, accounting judgements and formal balance sign-off remain outside the service organisation.

An important first-year task is to move the conversation from labour arbitrage to enterprise value. That includes understanding demand drivers, removing failure demand, improving first-time-right performance and showing how better service protects close, cash and decision quality. Automation is one lever among many and must not be used to industrialise unresolved exceptions.

The enduring test is a finance-services institution that can absorb change without losing control or exhausting its people. The director will build process leadership, succession, workforce planning and transparent career paths, while creating constructive tension with retained finance teams when upstream behaviour damages downstream service outcomes.

What you will own

• Confirm the service perimeter and publish an accountability map distinguishing service execution, process ownership, policy, control and balance sign-off.
• Establish tower-level operating reviews covering demand, first-time-right quality, ageing, control exceptions, capacity and cost to serve.
• Identify and quantify retained shadow work, then decide with accountable leaders whether it should be removed, standardised or formally owned.
• Exercise authority over service staffing, leadership appointments, work allocation and operating budget within approved enterprise limits.
• Introduce readiness gates for incoming transitions and decline migrations that lack stable process, data, documentation or control ownership.
• Build an improvement portfolio prioritised by failure demand, control exposure and stakeholder consequence rather than activity volume.
• Develop process-tower successors and a specialist career architecture that reduces dependence on a few experienced individuals.
• Deliver a first-year service-value account reconciling operational improvements to finance outcomes without unsupported savings claims.

Candidate qualifications

• Show direct leadership of multi-process finance services with accountability for operations, controls, people and economics.
• Demonstrate a transition you declined or paused because readiness evidence was inadequate, and explain the eventual operating result.
• Provide evidence of exposing retained shadow effort or failure demand that conventional service metrics did not capture.
• Bring broad command of record-to-report, payables, receivables and cross-process dependencies while respecting formal controllership boundaries.
• Describe how you created leadership succession and specialist careers in an operation vulnerable to turnover or concentrated knowledge.
• Evidence constructive negotiation with process owners and senior finance leaders across markets without accepting ambiguous accountability.
• Show disciplined benefit claims that connect capacity and quality changes to actual cost, control or service outcomes.

Working terms and boundaries

• This is a full-time permanent appointment with operating authority over the finance-services organisation and its approved budget.
• Accounting policy, statutory representation, formal balance ownership and enterprise investment approvals remain with designated executives.
• Service migration is conditional on documented readiness and may be paused by the director pending accountable remediation.
• First-year evaluation covers control stability, service value, leadership depth, talent health and the quality of enterprise relationships.
• Equity or long-term incentive awards remain subject to plan rules, vesting and applicable approvals.

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 FNA-PER-2026-BLR-10.