Zak Abro Email & Phone Number

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Auckland, New Zealand

I led the day-to-day operations of the NZPAC Finance and Credit Control function including treasury, risk management, statutory and performance reporting, cashflow management, forward looking analysis, and budgeting. As an active member of the NZPAC leadership team, I helped shape and implement the longer-term strategy across the region. As Executive director, I sat on 5 boards including responsibilities for chairing 2 entities.Streamlining month end and budgeting processes, having… Show more I led the day-to-day operations of the NZPAC Finance and Credit Control function including treasury, risk management, statutory and performance reporting, cashflow management, forward looking analysis, and budgeting. As an active member of the NZPAC leadership team, I helped shape and implement the longer-term strategy across the region. As Executive director, I sat on 5 boards including responsibilities for chairing 2 entities.Streamlining month end and budgeting processes, having migrated all 6 pacific entities over to the new general ledger within budget and timeline was a highlight. I also reduced reporting turnaround by 5-6 days for all Pacific countries and freed up their capacity to do other value add work locally. This involved process mapping, identifying pain points, and automating and streamlining tasks. I achieved the successful offshoring of 120 tasks, having identified that a vast majority of capacity was focused on manual, low value tasks. The pacific was successfully integrated into the AUSPAC reporting rhythms. Another highlight was uplifting the credit control capabilities. The team absorbed the 20% uplift in transaction volumes with existing FTE’s having created an automated solution and created performance metrics to measure credit control and sales against.I facilitated an increase in team engagement, empowering the team to generate tangible actions to increase efficiency. Having led a session with the team to hear about roadblocks and what worked well, I summarised key themes back to them, and explored together what could be done. The team created an action plan and engaged with finance team to implement actions including system training and transitioning from excel budgeting to system application.Establishing a succession planning framework, I created a skills matrix that highlighted GAPS and organised training sessions to help mitigate risks. Show less

Sydney, Australia

Reporting to: Head of FP&A | Revenue of AU$800m | 1 direct reports | Team of 4Enhance management reporting on 2 underperforming business to help facilitate better decision support , along with streamlining management information across the division. A highlight in this role was freeing up team time to provide ‘insights’ to better facilitate decision support rather than ‘reports’. Appropriate tasks were transitioned to the financial control team, resulting in standardized… Show more Reporting to: Head of FP&A | Revenue of AU$800m | 1 direct reports | Team of 4Enhance management reporting on 2 underperforming business to help facilitate better decision support , along with streamlining management information across the division. A highlight in this role was freeing up team time to provide ‘insights’ to better facilitate decision support rather than ‘reports’. Appropriate tasks were transitioned to the financial control team, resulting in standardized reporting across Australia and New Zealand and a reduction in month end reporting processes by 2 days.My team received positive feedback and more frequent contact from business contacts, as a result of helping them understand what information is used for, and asking them to seek feedback from business contacts on strengths and improvements. I provided on the job training of visualisation tools and storytelling of key messages. The team’s engagement increased as they began to add value as opposed to churning out reports. Show less

Sydney, Australia

As Financial Planning and Analysis Manager, I developed and mentored the FP&A / Financial systems team to manage the development and implementation of the annual budgeting/business plan and rolling forecast policies, procedures, and processes. I managed the financial and business analysis, ensuring consistency of reporting and analysis to provide commentary on Australia and New Zealand performance. I drove process improvements, system developments and overall efficiencies in the reporting… Show more As Financial Planning and Analysis Manager, I developed and mentored the FP&A / Financial systems team to manage the development and implementation of the annual budgeting/business plan and rolling forecast policies, procedures, and processes. I managed the financial and business analysis, ensuring consistency of reporting and analysis to provide commentary on Australia and New Zealand performance. I drove process improvements, system developments and overall efficiencies in the reporting processes.A key highlight was creating capacity for 20 Finance business partners to provide impactful analysis and insights rather than producing 150 financial reports monthly, having created a self-service model allowing profit and cost centres owners to access reports directly via an automated solution with the ability to filter on different views. I also valued being able to provide a budget shape to steer the conversation in advance of the bottom up budgeting process, reducing the days of manual data entry to bridge the gap between bottom up and expectations. I designed a top down high level budget model that took key assumptions at a "helicopter view" from 20 business units vs 300 profit centres.To enable the executive leadership team to have a "real time" outlook on the financial performance and address issues, I moved the organisation from an annual budgeting process with no forecasting, to establishing a reforecasting process using a budgeting system application which preloaded actuals and budget assumptions allowing the business to update current market conditions.I created visibility and clear lines of accountability for the executive team to identify outperforming business units and learnings, and remediation for underperforming units, having broken reporting down from 4 divisions where under or over performance was lost through consolidation to 50 business units. I reported key financial metrics, and what actions were being taken to remediate. Show less

Sydney Cbd

I led, planned, and coordinated the budgeting process for Australia and New Zealand and liaised with key stakeholders to deliver the 3-year business plan. I created a standardised budgeting process across ANZ, increased accuracy and reduced the days spent manually loading the budget, having worked closely with business, actuaries, reinsurance team, capital modelling team, HR and Group to understand requirements and partnered with the system finance team to lead the migration from an… Show more I led, planned, and coordinated the budgeting process for Australia and New Zealand and liaised with key stakeholders to deliver the 3-year business plan. I created a standardised budgeting process across ANZ, increased accuracy and reduced the days spent manually loading the budget, having worked closely with business, actuaries, reinsurance team, capital modelling team, HR and Group to understand requirements and partnered with the system finance team to lead the migration from an excel process to a system solution. The new budgeting process provided projections, scenarios to identify risk, and opportunities to deliver the 3 year business plan.I enhanced the credibility of the finance team moving from ‘information overload’ to ‘trusted business advisor’, having revamped the monthly word and data intensive memo towards a slide deck that created a visual view of the results and allowed the illustration of key indicators. Engaged with key stakeholders throughout to ensure it met their needs. Show less

Sydney, Australia

Achievements in this role included streamlining the monthly reporting of sales incentives to provide a transparent mechanism for >100 national account managers. I engaged with the data warehouse team to create and build a report from a range of source systems into a consistent format that would reduce manual manipulation and risk of error and saved 4 days’ work per month.I also enabled constructive conversations with intermediaries and internal evaluations of their performance… Show more Achievements in this role included streamlining the monthly reporting of sales incentives to provide a transparent mechanism for >100 national account managers. I engaged with the data warehouse team to create and build a report from a range of source systems into a consistent format that would reduce manual manipulation and risk of error and saved 4 days’ work per month.I also enabled constructive conversations with intermediaries and internal evaluations of their performance against Allianz goals to be assessed, allowing opportunities to be identified and discussed at these meetings, where previously we had entered the conversations blind. I created a financial forward looking model incorporating key past and present assumptions to create "what if" scenarios, allowing flex depending on the situation and understanding the future P&L impact. Show less

Sydney

1. Project Accounting for all 65 Projects with Allianz and presenting to Senior Management. 2. Finance representative for IT & Broker & Agency division to assist with the planning and reporting of management accounts3. Implementation of an automated Australian claims allocation model

Guildford, United Kingdom

1 Developed a transparent mechanism for IT cost allocations. 2. Production of all IT Corporate Plan schedules for budget, capital expenditure, headcount and depreciation 3. Expense Management for all IT cost centres & producing rolling forecasts.4. Line management of 2 staff including performance review, development and day to day work load management.

Guildford, United Kingdom

1. Successful data migration from the legacy system to SAP.2. Create User Acceptance Test (UAT) Test Plan, including test scripts and test schedule to test 42 interfaces from source systems to the SAP General Ledger (GL)3. Lead and support subject matter experts (SMEs) in test execution, recording results on Quality Centre

1. Planning and co-ordination of monthly tracking to measure the costs & benefits of all sustainability projects within the Claims Division2. Project Manager for a third party hire project under Six Sigma principles that delivered a £2.7M saving annually.

Guildford, United Kingdom

1. Responsibility for Trafalgar statutory accounts, quarterly audits, reporting and regulatory return 2. Co-ordination of Sarbanes Oxley reporting for the Allianz Cornhill Commercial and Personal Lines Accounts departments, ensuring mitigation of key risks.

Guildford, United Kingdom

1. Completion of 5 internal audits, analysing data, assessing controls, and making recommendations to improve the adequacy of controls.

Guildford, United Kingdom

1. Production of monthly management information by profit centre down to a class of business with supporting commentary.2. Preparation of the monthly cash flow forecast and presenting to senior accountants

Guildford, United Kingdom

1. Activity Based costs and creating a service model for motor engineers2. Financial risk assessments on stakeholders3 .Monthly & Quarterly financial reporting4. Consolidation of Statutory accounts & Regulatory reporting

Education record

Chartered Member

Education record

Ba Hons Business Studies, Business/Commerce, General, 2:1

2:1

4 Highers And 8 Standard Grades