Group Commercial Finance Manager
Property Finder
Total years of experience :14 years, 5 Months
As the Group Commercial Finance Manager covering 6 countries, my key responsibilities include:
Business Performance and Planning
Analyze revenue movements between the different types of customers and geographies to
understand growth drivers across the group. Help designing an automated system of reports
to capture the required information to be provided to internal and external stakeholders.
● Revenue KPIs are accurately embedded in the forecast and planning cycle.
● Ensuring actionable insights are embedded in the financial planning process and
reflected in the strategic plans.
● Providing Finance and Executive teams regular visibility of performance against
these key levers to enable timely actions to rectify underperformance.
● Synthesize data from databases and collaborate cross-functionally across Product,
Marketing, Accounting, and Business Intelligence (among other teams) to understand
relationships between key drivers of our business.
● Providing guidance to business stakeholders on what data to capture, map data needs
to business questions, and prioritize analysis work. Assisting the management
Intelligence in producing and distributing performance forecasting information across
all products and services.
● Providing general business case support and forecasting for new business initiatives.
Reporting and Budget
● Producing models to project long term growth, determining what impacting business
factors fill have
● Analyzing competitors, market trends and providing associated commentary for the
leadership team
● Utilizing BI tools to deliver meaningful insights into business performance
● Analyzing financial & operational results to develop & demonstrate a strong
understanding of business performance
● Communicating results and recommendations to senior management for innovations
that will lead to cost reduction, revenue generation and streamlining of operations
● Providing insights to senior management around financial modeling, forecasts, and
profitability
Product and CAPEX analysis
Supporting the Chief Product Officer and Product Team to understand features tracking and
analysis, including projecting financial returns
● Integrating with project management to drive value to add decisions surrounding
capital spent
● Providing general business case support and forecasting for new product initiatives.
● Ensuring investment allocation and resources are in alignment with Property Finder
Group’s strategic priorities.
Sales and Commercial Operation Support
Working closely with the Commercial Operations team to quantify revenue opportunities from
yield and upsell. Identify what rate B2B customer segments should be paying based on the
rate cards.
● The gap between rate card and actual billing is understood.
● A program of continuous action and monitoring delivers yield increases via upselling
and cross-sell.
● Additional intelligence added to the financial forecast and strategic planning process.
Marketing and OPEX Analysis
● Conducting a value-for-money analysis of brand spend.
● Working with Business Intelligence and Data Science team to optimize marketing spend
across regions and media channels and ensure that spend is measured against
realized return.
● Working with the marketing and research team to ensure that significant budgets and
associated activities have full business cases with effective optimistic, realistic, and
pessimistic scenarios applied to them.
Working as a Senior Finance Business Partner, my responsibilities include:
• Managing end to end Budgeting of the Company including collection and consolidation of data, challenging the numbers with the operational management and presenting to the senior management, the Holding Company and the Board for their review and approval
• Preparing monthly and ad hoc management reports for review by senior Management and the Holding Company on the financial performance of the business by Line of Business highlighting the key performance drivers and business risks and issues, explaining the reasons for major movements in revenue & expenses between budget, actual and previous periods
• Owner of the submission of monthly Corporate Performance Dashboard to the Holding Company
• Driving the periodic forecasting cycle and carrying out in depth variance analysis for Reported numbers vs. Budget and forecast
• Working with Operations team and strategic Finance to develop the best shoring business case. KPIs of cost/FTE and Revenue/FTE to be evaluated to track performance measures properly by each cost center and provide Line of Business statistics
• Pro-actively supporting the business in providing timely and insightful commercial support and analysis for the Line of Business to achieve their budgeted revenue and profitability targets
• Preparing the 5 year business plan including Cash flows and Balance Sheet after incorporating the numbers of subsidiaries
• Providing financial information to the financial accounting team to facilitate month end closing processes. Ensuring that all accruals are provided to Financial Accounting team as per month end reporting timeline
• Supporting on Debtors for the Credit Management teams. Monitoring timeliness of billings, ageing of DSO, identifying any trends. Ensuring all credit notes requests from clients are evaluated and justified before being signed off by the Chief Financial Officer.
EY - Dubai office December 2013 to date
Working as an Engagement Auditor in the Assurance Group, my responsibilities include: * End-to-end engagement management as team leader
* Supervision of the team and review of working papers of various areas of the financial statements
* Coordination with the team manager and partner for review and finalization of assurance engagements
* Liaison with client's management and communication of relevant matters to personnel at appropriate level of responsibility
* Audit of various head office functions including treasury operations specifically foreign exchange transactions, finance and branch operations
* Identifying control weakness in client's processes and recommending best practices as part of management letter
* Ensuring compliance with relevant Dubai Financial Services Authority regulations and other laws
Achievements
• Reduced the number of hours worked on audit engagements as compared with previous years by more than 10% through off-shoring of work.
• Contributed towards my group being ranked Group of the month in Assurance department within the EY Dubai Office.
Following are the most significant clients and related engagements that have contributed to my professional growth:
Financial Services
* Amlak Finance PJSC and its Group Companies (Annual Audit, December 31, 2013, as team leader)
* Amlak Finance PJSC and its Group Companies (Quarterly review, March 31, 2014, as team leader)
* Daman Investments PSC (Annual Audit, March 31, 2014, as team leader)
* I2BF Capital Management Limited (Annual audit, December 31, 2013, as team leader)
* DIFC Investments LLC (Annual Audit, December 31, 2013, as team member)
PwC - Karachi office November 2009 to October 2013 2012
I commenced my professional career as being part of PwC (ABAS Group - Section C) and rose to the designation of Supervisory Senior. My key responsibilities included: * Leading large teams through planning, execution and completion stages of audit
* Coordination with the team manager and client personnel
* Assisting clients in preparation of financial statements in accordance with the applicable financial reporting framework including compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
* Audit of various head office functions including treasury operations for banks and revenue, cost of goods sold, taxation and other significant components of financial statements for manufacturing concerns
* Supervision of the team and review of working papers of various areas of the financial statements
* On-the-job training and professional development of staff
Achievements
• Awarded "Outstanding performance" as team leader of audit of Dubai Islamic Bank Pakistan Limited being my first audit as team leader. I led a team of thirteen colleagues through the annual audit and was able to meet client's short deadlines by demonstrating exceptional leadership and team management skills. This included the foreign reporting of the bank to Deloitte & Touché (M.E.) - UAE for consolidation of the results of Dubai Islamic Bank Pakistan Limited into its parent company Dubai Islamic Bank P.J.S.C. The foreign reporting included ensuring the application of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by the bank including the application of IAS 39 (which mainly entailed computation of impairment on corporate and retail advances in accordance with the provisions of IAS 39)
• Was Team member in the project for Implementation IFRS -9 at Dubai Islamic Bank Pakistan Limited which was early adopted by the Group in 2011 which required a through understanding of the IFRS and technical knowledge combined with its practical application.
Following are the most significant clients in various sectors and related engagements that have contributed to my professional growth:
Consumer and Industrial Products and Services
* Martin Dow Pharmaceuticals Limited (Annual audit, December 31, 2012, as team member)
* Otsuka Pakistan Limited -Assignment for verification of related party transactions
Financial Services
* Dubai Islamic Bank Pakistan Limited (Annual audit, December 31, 2011 and 2012, as team leader)
* ORIX Leasing Pakistan Limited (Annual audit, June 30, 2013, as team leader)
* ABL Funds (Annual audit, June 30, 2013, as team leader)
* Elixir Securities Pakistan (Private) Limited (Internal audit, as team leader)
* KASB Bank Limited (Annual audit, December 31, 2009, as team member)
* Pak Oman Microfinance Bank Limited (Annual audit, December 31, 2009, as team member)
* Standard Chartered Modaraba (Annual audit, June 30, 2010, as team member)
* IGI Finex Securities Limited -Receivables assignment as team member
* NAFA Islamic Income Fund (Annual audit, June 30, 2010, as team member)
* Bank Al Falah Limited Ijarah Implementation assignment (December 31, 2011, as team member)
• Associate Member of ICAP since July 2013 • Secured Merit Certificates for outstanding performance in subjects "Functional English" and "Introduction to Economics and Finance" Chartered Management Accountant Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA)
Particulars Institute Year Status / Achievements Chartered Accountant The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP) 2013
Masters in Economics University of Karachi 2011 Secured 2nd division
Bachelors of Commerce University of Karachi 2009 Secured 4th position in Karachi