Pensions Manager

Greater London  ‐ Onsite
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Description

Pensions Manager
Brentford
6 Month Contract
Pay: up to £475 per day

Job Purpose and Key Responsibilities:

To ensure that the 6 GSK pension plans (including the GSK Common Investment Fund) are compliant with legislative requirements and best practice (total schemes size £15bn.).
To produce statutory Annual Reports and Financial Statements for all 6 entities in accordance with the SORP and other requirements.
To manage the UK Pensions Finance team (3 direct reports) and drive change to ensure quality output is delivered in an efficient manner.
To provide the Trustees of all the UK GSK pension plans with a high level of support in order to fulfil their statutory responsibilities. Preparing regular and ad hoc reports to trustees and deal with follow up actions between meetings.
To produce expenses reporting, including preparing annual expense budgets, quarterly expense variance analysis and quarterly management accounts.
To liaise with Scheme and Corporate auditors, including discussing management letters and providing management responses.
To manage the risk management process within Pensions Finance, UK Benefits and Pension Investments. Manage and assess risks, record breaches and report to the Trustees.
To assist with vendor managing service providers to the GSK plans to ensure they operate to the highest standards of activity and compliance. Including custodian, banks, administrators, investment managers and consultants.
To oversee the investment performance of investment fund managers, deal with any queries and resolve.

Key responsibilities include:

Oversight of finance operations. Provide support and review function over operational deliverables, including cash management, contribution collection, unit pricing, approval of expenses, and other items.
Financial reporting. Assisting with the financial reporting function for all 6 GSK plans, ensuring reports and accounts are produced in SORP format, and liaison with external audit.
Supporting the Trustees. Preparing papers for trustee meetings and sub committees (approx 20 per annum), attendance, and ensuring that the Trustees received the highest level of support in all aspects of the Finance function. Providing support between meetings on ad hoc matters.
Funding status. Producing on a weekly and monthly basis to the Trustees, and the CFO, the funding level of each scheme (and overall in aggregate), asset splits by type across all the schemes and the split between return seeking and liability matching assets.
Risk management. Dealing with all aspects of risk management for all plans, including developing innovation, maintaining risk maps for each entity, monitoring risk compliance and reporting to Trustees on a regular basis. Helping to develop the way in which GSK and the Trustees manage risk in the environment of constant change.
Covenant monitoring. Preparing regular reports to the Trustees on the strength of the covenant of GSK, including quarterly reporting and impact of corporate activity.
Compliance and governance. Ensuring the financial compliance of the GSK plans: including UK tax compliance, VAT issues, non UK tax and country documentation.
Contributions. Overseeing the contributions collection process to ensure all schemes receive the correct contributions in accordance with the schedules of contributions.
Buy in policies. Dealing with aspects of the policies, including accounting, policy valuations, collateral management, custody and payroll reconciliations. Liasing with consultants and vendor on a regular basis, including attending joint management committee meetings.
Investment performance reporting. To oversee performance reporting for fund managers, dealing with any issues and resolving queries.

Vendor management

Custodian. To develop and maintain the service level agreements (SLAs). Monitor compliance with SLA and performance of custodian. Regular meetings with vendor who oversees custodian and following up issues with custodian.
Investment Managers - To monitor the operational risk within the investment managers per the risk map.
Other providers - Such as tax agents, class action agents etc. To ensure that they are operating within contractual and regulatory requirements and in the interests of the GSK plans.

Managing the property portfolio

Developing and maintaining SLAs for various parties involved and ensuring that they perform in accordance with them. The parties include the investment managers, valuers, lawyers other agents.
Ensuring that transactions are carried out within the necessary compliance and in the interests of the Trustees.

Sustainable Investment (SI). Dealing with SI issues. Liaison with fund managers and reporting to Trustees.
Self investment. Monitoring of self investment within the plans and reporting to the trustees.
Process Improvements. Champion simplification projects and implementation of best practices within the Pension Finance and Risk Team.
Deputise as appropriate for the Director of Pensions Finance and Risk.

Specialised Knowledge:

Qualified ACA/ACCA (minimum 3 years PQE) with appropriate technical experience in the pensions environment. The depth of experience required means that the individual is likely to have worked in an in house pensions finance role, and with an audit/compliance background previously.
Knowledge of UK regulatory environment including pensions, investments and tax.
Knowledge of finance and accounting related activities.
Knowledge of property sector.
Knowledge and practical experience of formal risk management and control

All profiles will be reviewed against the required skills and experience. Due to the high number of applications, we will only be able to respond to successful applicants in the first instance. We thank you for your interest and the time taken to apply.
If you match these requirements, please apply as usual. Elevate will send you an email, please open, click and action it and your application will be visible to the hiring organisation directly. Elevate provides a route to contract and contingent assignments across many skills areas by matching your profile to relevant jobs that our customers post to the platform.
Please note that Elevate Direct is a software provider and not a recruitment agency. As such, Elevate is not involved in the recruitment processes for any employer, who uses the platform. Please contact employers directly through your Elevate profile with any queries related to your application.
Start date
ASAP
From
Elevate Direct
Published at
13.02.2020
Project ID:
1892171
Contract type
Freelance
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