Senior Finance Director, CEE

Working in a matrixed organization, reporting directly to both the Regional Managing Director (Central Eastern Europe (Poland; Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bulgaria; Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) and VP FPA Europe & Europe Markets, this role is responsible for creating and maintaining a high standard of financial discipline, business decision support, and accountability within the CEE Cluster. The role will oversee all financial aspects of the business from Financial Planning and Analysis to Deals, Controllership, Sourcing and Revenue Audit. The role is also expected to constantly enhance and refine processes and procedures, as well as challenge business owners to continuously drive efficiency, cost savings and deliver best go to market strategy. In this role, the Senior Director, is required to continuously balance risk mitigation with operational efficiency and effectiveness, supporting strategy formulation and rigorous execution.

This person will lead a team responsible for the end-to-end process to:

• Partner with the RMD CEE and provide strong financial thought leadership as it relates to growth strategies, current performance, business case analysis of client incentive deals; sales, marketing and product initiatives; as well as pricing and interchange proposals

• Deliver short-term to multi-year plans and commitments, financial budgets and forecasts for revenues, expenses, and headcount

• Deliver financial management analytics and communicate business implications and insights from analysis

She or He will develop a culture where optimizing performance is everybody’s responsibility, linking objectives to incentives and maximizing growth opportunities to deliver our strategic and financial goals.

Key Accountabilities:

• Commercial Finance Partnering

• Business partner with the CEE Reg. Managing Director to ensure that the go to market strategy is supported by an excellent financial business plan that can endure challenging financial and economic circumstances and able to pivot to address critical priorities

• Provide strategic partnership, financial insight, direction, oversight and control over client performance and new deals

• Drive uptake of Value Added Services (VAS) and Commercial Money Solutions (CMS) through informed analytics of client performance and business partnering with business units

• Oversee and suggest the optimal resources allocations (people and funds) to deliver on financial targets while balancing short term results with long term strategies

• Finance Planning & Analysis

• Lead the business planning, budgeting and forecasting processes for Revenues, Client Incentives and Operating Expenses. Coordinate inputs from the various functions for both revenues and costs, plus lead the review and challenge process

• Own and orchestrate with business and corporate functions the  Multi-year Strategic plan

• Ensure that the Regional Managing Director and their team are regularly updated on financial performance

• Provide insight into key variances and business trends and identify risk and opportunities (plus mitigating actions) to ensure delivery on targets

• Internal Control & Support

• With the support of Europe Controllership team, safeguard the accuracy in financial accounting and reporting, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and other finance operations, while ensuring SOX compliance

• Assert financial controls to mitigate corporate risk, drive financial stewardship and create appropriate approvals for expenditure

• Oversee smooth flow of business operations and transactions as per Visa processes and procedures

• Sourcing

• With the support of the regional Procurement team, ensure that all tactical and strategic sourcing activities are conducted as per Visa’s standards leading to Operational efficiency, as measured through reduced cost and greater speed of transaction execution

• Continuously driving for savings, by facilitating and executing upon Visa’s purchasing strategy as set by Procurement

• Revenue Audit

• Work closely with the regional Revenue Audit team to ensure that our clients’ self-reported Operating Certificates are accurate and reflect the business performance

• Ensure that Visa’s revenue from clients (Issuers and Acquirers) are timely and correctly reported and collected

• Continuously work on new ways to minimize and eliminate revenue loss due to weak or inaccurate reporting at the client end

• Continuous Improvement

• Responsible for continually proposing ideas to improve local, regional and even global processes, tools and frameworks, driving improved finance operations, including:

  • Collaborating with various stakeholders such as IT, Business and Control functions to implement and maintain streamlined and simplified tools and processes with defined service level agreements (SLAs)

  • Serving as the business owner responsible for driving the financial systems implementation and enhancements in the cluster

• Leadership Skills

  • A proven, authentic leader who is able to demonstrate strong thought leadership within the Finance function for the Leadership Team within the CEE team

  • Excellent interpersonal and leadership skills with the ability to successfully promote and facilitate collaboration across different teams whilst interfacing with people at all levels in the organization

  • High degree of compassion, able to engage, coach and inspire others to perform at their best

  • Ability to foster an inclusive environment, enabling the business to reach its ambitious goals

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

 Basic Qualifications

- Minimum of Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

 Preferred Qualifications
- 12-15 years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree (Finance or equivalent)
- 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD)
- Qualified Accountant degree is recommended (ACA, ACCA, CIMA, CPA or equivalent local qualifications)
- Minimum 8 years of related Finance experience in a multinational organization
- Proven commercial business acumen
- Strong negotiation and influencing skills
- Proven ability to work under pressure and to meet deadlines
- Self-motivated and positive attitude
- Strong PC and high proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite products (Excel, Word & PowerPoint)

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.