Reporting to the Senior Finance Business Partner, you will use your skills and emotional intelligence to provide the highest standard of management information, reporting and support to budget holders and stakeholders at all levels of the business.

A growing business with a strong social purpose

Our purpose at Catalyst is ‘homes people love’. That means everything from developing and maintaining great homes, to delivering excellent service to our customers every day. We provide housing for those who can’t afford a home without our help as well as offering a wide range of homes for rent, shared ownership or outright purchase. We’re one of the UK’s leading housing associations with 34,000 homes and 1,200 employees. We're a strong business at a particularly exciting point in our evolvement having recently merged with another large housing association, Aldwyck. We are inspired by the benefits of a diverse workforce. We encourage diversity and inclusion at all levels of our organisation and are fully committed to equality of opportunity.

We’re also a Sunday Times top 100 Best Company to Work for. We invest care, time and resources in our people because we know it’s our people who will drive our purpose. If you’d like to be part of what we do, please get in touch.

The role

You’ll be a stickler for making sure information is fit for purpose and easy to access and understand, and you will produce high quality monthly management accounts reports for budget holders and directors that helps them do their jobs effectively, drives ever-improving financial management and enables them to take appropriate action.

As a business partner you will be more than just a number cruncher - you will make it your mission to understand and influence financial performance, drive improvement, and provide a “Wow” service with great relationships that reflects our vision of being a first-class finance team. You will attend senior management meetings to enhance engagement and support for key stakeholders, influencing successful strategic and operational decisions and you will lead the annual budget setting process, using your skills and experience to bring it to life for your budget holders; knowing when to encourage, when to instruct, and when to push back. You will line manage and work closely with an Assistant Management Accountant to ensure management accounts and reports provides high quality, accurate, timely and clear information. You will be a central source of expertise and operational advice, and you will ensure that you have appropriate knowledge to understand the bigger picture and how the areas for which you are responsible impact on and are impacted by other teams. You will know when to make judgements and when to escalate issues. Because you are committed to our social values, you will live and breathe our culture, service style and behaviours.

Key requirements

You will be a qualified accountant with experience in positions that reflect the technical requirements and the interpersonal skills required for this role. You will have experience in management accounting / business reporting role(s), where you have taken the lead on management accounts production, reporting, budget setting and forecasting. You will be totally committed to delivering excellent customer experience – being easy, reliable and empathetic in the way you deal with customers, and colleagues. You will be a confident communicator at all levels, communicating with gravitas and diplomacy and have a history of working collaboratively with operational colleagues knowing when to support, and when to push back and challenge. You’ll be using Excel comprehensively for reporting and analysis, so your Excel skills must be top notch and experience of Sun, Q &A and Vision Excel would be a bonus. As a confident Catalyst Finance Business Partner, you will be a role model, knowing what it takes to work collaboratively with colleagues, ensuring they have the right information to help us deliver our financial targets. You will be passionate about getting it right and producing excellent reports that focus on the important things. Previous experience of managing and mentoring people is key, and you will bring a proactive, informed and customer focused approach to your role.