Lead Financial Planning & Analysis team for Retirement Solutions business - which helps customers secure income in retirement through provision of individual annuities, home equity release and bulk purchase annuities / defined benefit solutions.Team provide high quality analysis and insight across several areas including financial planning, performance and reporting, cash flow analysis and decision support across the Group, partnering across various business functions.

Led Open Expense Business Partnering team of 10 within Finance function, providing financial support in respect of Expenses to the Phoenix Open business, including ‘Pensions & Savings’ and ‘Retirement Solutions’ business units.

Leading a team of 7 commercial actuaries and analysts in pricing of Workplace and Retail pensions products (both new and existing) and providing commercial leadership to the wider business. The Commercial team is a key part of the Proposition area, responsible for ensuring that our propositions are both competitive and profitable, and enabling delivery of our key strategic objective to ‘grow and retain our book profitably’.Whilst in role I:• Led financial workstream for strategic deal to acquire Standard Life Brand from Abrdn, alongside reciprocal sale of Wrap Platform products to Abrdn, involving commercial negotiations with counterparts at Abrdn, production of board materials to outline commercial impacts of the deal on the Phoenix Group and shaping of external investor story.• Led review of our Workplace pricing strategy which culminated in a material shift in our stance on pricing of existing business with the aim of boosting client retention, alongside enabling more competitive pricing for new business.• Embedded a change in culture and attitude within the team, encouraging them to work more closely with our colleagues in Distribution to enable more informed pricing decisions and in turn allow Distribution to improve financial messaging to clients and advisers. • Influenced changes to the commercial agreement between Standard Life and our outsourcing partner, to ensure it was structured in such a way as to realise economies of scale which would benefit the pricing of new business. • Role involves extensive interaction with senior leaders including frequently presenting at Executive committees and so having the ability to influence key stakeholders.• Chaired committee with our external investment manager to discuss the interaction between client retention and performance/composition of our default fund ranges

Leading and coordinating the annual financial and strategic planning process for UK and Europe Pensions & Savings (P&S) business, with support from a wider team of analysts, including:• Financial modelling of IFRS profits, assets/flows, expenses and other key metrics for Standard Life.• Working closely with P&S CFO to agree key planning assumptions and to prepare stretching but attainable targets that align to the company’s strategic and financial objectives.• Communicating and agreeing final budget numbers and strategy with senior leaders within the P&S business including gaining signoff from our internal regulatory boards.• Leading and coaching analysts within the wider team during the production of the budget and forecasts.• Working with stakeholders across the whole P&S business to collect and collate planning assumptions. Challenging these assumptions to ensure accuracy and integrity of budgets and forecasts.• Analysing financial impact of proposed strategic decisions and modeling the impact of different market and economic factors on the business plan.• Constantly refining and adapting our budgeting process to align to the rapidly changing business and to ensure we maintain an effective control environment.Role recently included adapting our planning process in the midst of the sale of Standard Life to the Phoenix Group. The deal fundamentally altered the financials of the business and required whole-scale changes to our process, modelling and strategic narrative, each of which I was able lead the team to deliver.

• Planning and financial modelling of profits, dividends, assets/flows for each part of the UK and Europe Pensions & Savings business•

• Building relationships within the designated business area and acting as their key point of contact in the Finance team. • Substantial exposure to senior stakeholders within my aligned business area, providing them with financial support to allow them to understand the drivers of performance, help them to make strategic business decisions and to help them to achieve challenging financial targets.• Tracking and reporting of revenue and cost performance and proposing options and recommendations to improve business unit performance.• Responsible for robust challenging of assumptions in budgets, forecasts and business cases.• Leading and part-managing business analyst on the production and delivery of expense data and MI to ensure data quality and to help build business knowledge within the team.• Working closely and collaboratively with the leaders within Finance to shape and improve the quality of our management information and to tailor it to the needs of our customers within the business.• Providing financial support for ad hoc projects within my aligned business area.• Whilst in this role I supported both the Workplace Pensions division and our Customer Operations function.

• Modelling of costs and revenues to help assist project investment decisions.• Ad hoc projects and initiatives involving a mixture of working autonomously and utilising a network of contacts throughout Finance and the wider business.• Support for monthly production of UK Performance Reporting, providing commentary and insight.