Anyone with experience in FP&A or Treasury jobs?
April 22, 2023 3:29 PM Subscribe
I have an interview with an insurance company next week in the U.K for an FP&A and Treasury Management Assistant role.
I was wondering if anyone who works in those areas might be able to expand on what you do, whether you enjoy it and where you think it could potentially take me?
I am a Junior Management Accountant with a foundation in really entry level data inputting Accounts Payables roles. I have 3 ACCA exams remaining.
I am not particularly enjoying being a Mngment Accountant as it involves confronting and challenging senior management. I just don't think it suits my personality, I feel like you need to be a persuasive people person.
I'm happier communicating with people in other forms. Do you think I can find a niche in FP&A or Treasury. What does the career route look like and are there roles for more introverted types? Is the job interesting?
Sorry I know I'm being a bit vague but I'm at the very beginning of my career and feel a bit lost.
I am a Junior Management Accountant with a foundation in really entry level data inputting Accounts Payables roles. I have 3 ACCA exams remaining.
I am not particularly enjoying being a Mngment Accountant as it involves confronting and challenging senior management. I just don't think it suits my personality, I feel like you need to be a persuasive people person.
I'm happier communicating with people in other forms. Do you think I can find a niche in FP&A or Treasury. What does the career route look like and are there roles for more introverted types? Is the job interesting?
Sorry I know I'm being a bit vague but I'm at the very beginning of my career and feel a bit lost.
FP&A might be even more of a "persuasive people person" thing than Management Accounting.
I don't know if I'm an introvert or extrovert, and I don't think it matters much for your career. There are many introverts in leadership - Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are famous for being introverts. Introverted thinkers can be deeply reflective and open to new ideas, which may be a more important skill than simply being a persuasive extrovert - none of us are experts in ALL fields at once, we have to identify and take the best advice from the actual experts.
I've worked in what I suppose we could call FP&A for over 15 years and I've been in the management layer for about 6-7 years now. It's a very broad field with numerous types of work, and I'll talk a bit about it.
There's modelling and forecasting work, where we build business case scenarios and project approval papers to present to the board for approval and funding. This is where the persuasion bit is really important: with accounting, it is retrospective, actual numbers, there's an actual right and wrong most of the time. With forecasting, it's all about trust, which is built over time with dozens of tiny signals. Think about meeting someone for the first time, at a college club or church, and over several meetings you develop the idea that they're trustworthy and dependable. Why did you develop that impression? Is it the way they talked? Dressed? The people they associated with? What they said? Things they did, their track record? Think of yourself as an expert, external consultant or advisor. You neither buying nor selling: you're saying, if you go down path A, then this will happen, and if you go down path B, then this will happen, and let management choose their course. Everything you present must be impeccable, because books DO get judged by their cover.
I also like to use the example of nurses and surgeons. Something minor goes wrong during surgery, and the surgeon will ask the nurse to hand them instrument A to fix it. But the nurse has seen this same surgery go wrong the same way multiple times, and before the surgeon can turn to them to ask the nurse is already holding out instrument A for them.
And there's another level, where the nurse holds out instrument B, and the surgeon does a double take, and realizes instrument B is actually more suitable for the task, and takes it instead.
Another FP&A task is change control. The commonly used term here is "turning data into actionable information in a timely manner". This is where I find a lot of trained accountants struggle. Unlike accounting, FP&A work is inherently imprecise and incomplete. You're constantly trading off speed and quality, because there's a literal fire-hose of data and deadlines to meet. A 100% correct answer is useless if it arrives a week too late.
You know that saying, if you've never missed a plane in your life, you're going to the airport too early? Say a domestic flight costs $200, and you fly once a month, you arrive at the airport 2 hours early to guarantee you never miss a flight. That's 48 hours of waiting you're doing every two years. What if you instead got to the airport 30 minutes before the flight, leading you to miss 1 in 24 flights but now you only spend 12 hours waiting over two years? That means you wasted $200, but saved 36 hours of your time - which is a bargain at $5.55 per hour, depending on how much money you make and how much you value your time.
That's another one of the axioms in the work we do - if you never make a mistake, you're taking too long, and it's not optimal. People who are overly conscientious and want to 100% complete their work hate this. People who are anxious about making mistakes in front of others, hate this. If you try to cope by working 14 hours a day you will burn out.
posted by xdvesper at 11:48 PM on April 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't know if I'm an introvert or extrovert, and I don't think it matters much for your career. There are many introverts in leadership - Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are famous for being introverts. Introverted thinkers can be deeply reflective and open to new ideas, which may be a more important skill than simply being a persuasive extrovert - none of us are experts in ALL fields at once, we have to identify and take the best advice from the actual experts.
I've worked in what I suppose we could call FP&A for over 15 years and I've been in the management layer for about 6-7 years now. It's a very broad field with numerous types of work, and I'll talk a bit about it.
There's modelling and forecasting work, where we build business case scenarios and project approval papers to present to the board for approval and funding. This is where the persuasion bit is really important: with accounting, it is retrospective, actual numbers, there's an actual right and wrong most of the time. With forecasting, it's all about trust, which is built over time with dozens of tiny signals. Think about meeting someone for the first time, at a college club or church, and over several meetings you develop the idea that they're trustworthy and dependable. Why did you develop that impression? Is it the way they talked? Dressed? The people they associated with? What they said? Things they did, their track record? Think of yourself as an expert, external consultant or advisor. You neither buying nor selling: you're saying, if you go down path A, then this will happen, and if you go down path B, then this will happen, and let management choose their course. Everything you present must be impeccable, because books DO get judged by their cover.
I also like to use the example of nurses and surgeons. Something minor goes wrong during surgery, and the surgeon will ask the nurse to hand them instrument A to fix it. But the nurse has seen this same surgery go wrong the same way multiple times, and before the surgeon can turn to them to ask the nurse is already holding out instrument A for them.
And there's another level, where the nurse holds out instrument B, and the surgeon does a double take, and realizes instrument B is actually more suitable for the task, and takes it instead.
Another FP&A task is change control. The commonly used term here is "turning data into actionable information in a timely manner". This is where I find a lot of trained accountants struggle. Unlike accounting, FP&A work is inherently imprecise and incomplete. You're constantly trading off speed and quality, because there's a literal fire-hose of data and deadlines to meet. A 100% correct answer is useless if it arrives a week too late.
You know that saying, if you've never missed a plane in your life, you're going to the airport too early? Say a domestic flight costs $200, and you fly once a month, you arrive at the airport 2 hours early to guarantee you never miss a flight. That's 48 hours of waiting you're doing every two years. What if you instead got to the airport 30 minutes before the flight, leading you to miss 1 in 24 flights but now you only spend 12 hours waiting over two years? That means you wasted $200, but saved 36 hours of your time - which is a bargain at $5.55 per hour, depending on how much money you make and how much you value your time.
That's another one of the axioms in the work we do - if you never make a mistake, you're taking too long, and it's not optimal. People who are overly conscientious and want to 100% complete their work hate this. People who are anxious about making mistakes in front of others, hate this. If you try to cope by working 14 hours a day you will burn out.
posted by xdvesper at 11:48 PM on April 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
And you can kind of see the tension / contradiction in what I just wrote - you may have to finish a task in 2-3 days, and have enough time to analyze just 20% of the data, but you strategically pick the 20% that gives you sufficient (say 70%) coverage that providence confidence in your projections and modelling. Then you package it in a slide deck that looks immaculate and professional, that you deliver with confidence.
This is the exact opposite to what some introverts tend to do, where privately they want to under-promise and over-deliver, so they do an insane amount of work in the back-end getting all the analysis done but hedge and then make a weak presentation.
The good news is that all this can be trained, you just have to be not afraid of the process and dive in. You learn and acclimatize by repetition. I believe everyone has certain tendencies but everyone can learn the skills required.
posted by xdvesper at 12:13 AM on April 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is the exact opposite to what some introverts tend to do, where privately they want to under-promise and over-deliver, so they do an insane amount of work in the back-end getting all the analysis done but hedge and then make a weak presentation.
The good news is that all this can be trained, you just have to be not afraid of the process and dive in. You learn and acclimatize by repetition. I believe everyone has certain tendencies but everyone can learn the skills required.
posted by xdvesper at 12:13 AM on April 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
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In general, LinkedIn can be a treasure trove of connections if you can identify people with jobs that are interesting and reach out to them. Note - there's so much spam on linkedin that it's important to provide an intro note when you ask to connect with someone, otherwise connection requests often get ignored. If you request an "informational interview" and note that you're early in your career and eager to connect with them to learn about their experience, that may get you some traction. It's good to ask these questions early in your career. Hopefully it will help you identify some mentors as well. Good luck!
posted by hampanda at 7:41 PM on April 23, 2023 [1 favorite]