Finance Transformation Office Director

The mandate

The Finance Transformation Office Director will own the durable mechanism by which finance converts strategic intent into a controlled portfolio of operating change. This is a permanent enterprise leadership appointment, not a programme-reporting post. It carries authority to challenge business cases, sequence dependencies, stop inadequately governed initiatives and require accountable benefit evidence from sponsors.

During the first 90 days, the director will inventory active finance change, reconstruct its economic and control logic, and identify collisions in people, data, close calendars and decision capacity. By month six, the portfolio must have a common investment grammar, explicit outcome owners and a governance rhythm that distinguishes delivery progress from actual finance improvement. By month twelve, weak initiatives should have been reshaped or stopped and priority outcomes should be evidenced in operations.

The portfolio may include process, data, controls, service delivery, operating-model and technology-enabled change, but the director does not become the default owner of every project. A central obligation is to build strong sponsor and process-owner accountability. The office will maintain enterprise design integrity while delivery remains as close as practical to the teams that will operate the result.

The role owns transformation portfolio standards, integrated sequencing, executive decision preparation and benefits assurance. It can require remediation plans and withhold a readiness recommendation where evidence is insufficient. It cannot approve accounting positions, release production changes, sign financial statements or override formal control owners. Those boundaries must be visible in every charter.

Over time, success will be evident in fewer competing priorities, cleaner decision records, realistic capacity commitments and benefits that reconcile to finance results. The director will also create a succession-ready transformation capability, developing leaders who can combine process literacy, change judgement and financial discipline without depending on external programme infrastructure.

What you will own

• Establish an authoritative portfolio register linking each initiative to an executive sponsor, measurable operating outcome, control effect, dependency and committed capacity.
• Introduce investment and stage-gate standards that require problem evidence, baseline measures, option rationale, adoption ownership and benefit-accounting rules.
• Re-sequence the first-year portfolio around close, reporting and operational constraints, making displaced work and opportunity cost explicit.
• Create an executive decision forum in which exceptions, trade-offs and unresolved dependencies are decided rather than merely noted.
• Exercise authority to return incomplete cases, require recovery plans and recommend stopping work that lacks accountable outcomes or feasible capacity.
• Implement benefit assurance that separates cash, cost avoidance, capacity release, risk reduction and service improvement without double counting.
• Build a small, high-calibre office with portfolio, change, process and value-assurance capability, including development and succession plans.
• Publish a month-twelve transformation health assessment showing realised outcomes, residual exposure and the next portfolio choices.

Candidate qualifications

• Show sustained leadership of a finance transformation portfolio with competing process, control, data and operating-model dependencies.
• Provide an example of stopping or materially reshaping a sponsored initiative after testing its evidence, and explain the executive consequence.
• Demonstrate rigorous benefits accounting, including treatment of capacity release, avoided cost and risk outcomes that do not appear directly in the ledger.
• Evidence authority with senior finance and operational leaders while maintaining clear distinctions between portfolio governance and delivery ownership.
• Describe how you built an internal transformation capability that remained effective after consultants or temporary programme leaders departed.
• Bring working depth across core finance processes and the ability to identify when a local optimisation creates enterprise control or service harm.
• Show experience managing portfolio choices across markets, time zones and different readiness levels without imposing empty uniformity.

Working terms and boundaries

• This is a full-time permanent appointment with authority over transformation portfolio standards, governance and the design of the central office.
• Formal accounting judgements, balance ownership, production release and control certification remain with their designated executives.
• First-year performance will be assessed through portfolio choices, decision quality, adoption and evidenced operating benefits, not milestone volume alone.
• External support may be commissioned through approved channels, but provider selection and conflicts must remain transparent.
• Long-term incentive treatment follows plan rules and does not alter the director's obligation to report benefit evidence impartially.

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 7 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-PER-2026-SGP-06.