Finance Director, West Africa at Visa Incorporated

Job Description

• This Finance Director position is based in Nigeria, will partner with the Head of Finance for WCA, and be responsible for the financial health of local operations in Nigeria and West Africa. The Finance Director will oversee financial planning (budgeting and forecasting), financial analysis and reporting, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and modelling of client deals and business cases. This role will have direct exposure to West & Central Africa (WCA) leadership team members and be required to work closely with other Finance teams across the CEMEA region.

Responsibilities:

Financial Management:

• Lead the month-end, quarter-end, and year-end reporting requirements in accordance with deadlines.
• Manage the forecast and budget process for Nigeria market, ensuring all inputs and analytics are provided in compliance with published deadlines and corporate guidelines.
• Implement strategies to prevent and resolve bad debts, ensuring timely collection of receivables and minimizing financial risk to the organization.
• Provide in-depth support in the areas of revenue management and investment decision.
• Participate in continuous improvement activities to meet or exceed internal customers’ expectations and focus business engagements on delivering agile business results.

Revenue Analytics and Business Partnering:

• Lead the analysis of key business drivers (e.g., volumes, transactions, etc.) for use in strategic planning, annual budgeting, and quarterly forecasting.
• Develop financial strategies to drive business growth and accelerate in-market executions.
• Lead the financial assessment of client incentive deals, by completing and signing off the associated financial models. Work closely with business team throughout the deal process by supporting the deal structuring effort and challenging assumptions appropriately. Ensure ultimately that Visa’s interests are front and center, financial targets are being met, while offering attractive terms to clients.

Relationship Management:

• Partner with business and regional teams to ensure alignment on financial performance and the drivers of forecasts and results.
• Demonstrate strong sense of urgency when preparing and evaluating multiple incentive deals, and proactively align priorities with West Africa Cluster Head on a weekly basis.
• Build and maintain relationships with finance business partners in WCA sub-region and CEMEA Hub, to ensure they are aware of the latest forecasts, deals’ timelines, risks/opportunities, and how we plan to quickly mitigate or leverage them respectively.

Controllership:

• Process and maintain accounting records: Ensuring high quality of accounting accuracy, timeliness of reporting and compliance to corporate policies, GAAP, SEC, and SOX requirements are fundamental to the role.
• Support and assist other controllers: Obtaining, reviewing, analyzing, and communicating financial and non-financial data and reports relating to Nigerian operations is crucial for informed decision-making.
• Ensure transactions are compliant: Making sure transactions are captured, recorded, summarized, and reported in compliance with policies & procedures, US GAAP, IFRS, Central Bank of Nigeria reporting requirements if any, as well as statutory, corporate and tax requirements is key to maintaining financial integrity.
• Assist Controllership teams in oversight role: Assisting in overseeing the Nigeria operations ensures that all financial activities align with the company's goals and regulations.
• Analyze executed business transactions: Detecting anomalies and non-compliances, working with other supporting functions to investigate, report and aid the Nigeria business unit to remediate the issues and implement effective controls to avoid re-occurrence is critical for maintaining internal control health.

Compliance and Governance:

• Ensure data integrity and consistency of information as well as organized documentation of all financial assumptions, results and data sources used.
• Provide advisory and guidance to business partners on deals structuring, of their approved budgets & forecasts, and their commitment to budget/forecast on a continuous basis.
• Critical Success Factors in The Role:

The What:

• Lead revenue analytics and business partnering responsibilities in West Africa to drive growth and accelerate business executions.
• Prepare timely and high-quality P&L forecasts and financial assessment of client deals, effectively co-manage deals’ approval timelines with business leads, and highlight risks and opportunities, how we plan to quickly mitigate or leverage them respectively.
• Ensure accurate accounting of Nigeria operations with timely reporting, and compliance to corporate policies, GAAP, and SOX requirements.
• Participate in continuous improvement activities to meet or exceed internal customers’ expectations and focus business engagements on delivering agile business results.

The How:

• Act as an owner: Demonstrate a strong sense of ownership for the financial health of Nigeria and West Africa operations. Proactively identify and resolve issues that could impact the financial performance of the business. Take a personal interest in the success of the business and make decisions that are in the best interests of the company.
• Listen and learn from customers: Listen and learn from customers and seek to deeply understand our stakeholders’ needs to enable them to achieve their goals, while continuously looking for ways to improve the financial performance of the business. Using these learnings, analyze and challenge assumptions to identify new opportunities and potential risks.
• Enable each other to succeed: Strive to work and win together as partners and remove barriers and empower business teams to maximize the impact of our collective resources and capabilities.
• Decide quickly and move fast: Make the best call based on the available data and take calculated risks. Have a strong bias for action when managing and driving the approval process for multiple incentive deals.
• This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your hiring manager.

Qualifications

Leadership:

• Minimum of 10 years of work experience with a bachelor’s degree, or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g., Masters/MBA), or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD.
• Must be a proactive, high-energy, and motivated team player capable of delivering multiple initiatives/projects.
• Ability to cultivate strong and effective relationships across the business and communicate effectively with Executive Management
• Ability to work well under pressure and manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced and dynamic environment.
• Able to work cross-functionally, geographically, and with virtual teams while promoting a culture of openness, trust, and flexibility.

Technical:

• Degree in Accounting or professional accounting qualification (ACA, ACCA CPA or equivalent) is preferred.
• ICAN certified.
• Hands-on experience with US GAAP/IFRS and SEC/statutory requirements.
• Strong technical accounting skills, and experience researching and documenting accounting issues.
• Expert skills in MS Excel and PowerPoint, familiarity with integrated accounting applications, particularly Oracle, and proven system skills (e.g., TM1, Hyperion, etc.)