Hiring your 1st Finance Manager in a scaling Fintech/Tech business.

Setting the Scene – When to hire.

When a company starts to grow from a small room of people to a more structured SME of around 20-40 people, the need to formalise a finance function and to deliver monthly reporting becomes an ever more important need.?The founders and C-suite will want/need to track the company performance and have a more detailed view of cashflow and budget setting. These detailed metrics take time to perfect and require a hands-on professional who can create a scalable framework so that founders can make better data led decisions to grow the company.

As a start-up company scales to 100, 200, 500 and onto any size, the Finance Manager position will always lie at the heart of the finance function, although it’s responsibilities will start to constrict and specialise.

Why Hire a finance Manager

Many start-ups may continue to outsource their finance or use a particularly financially savvy operational leader to cover this area and In many cases this can be a competent option.?However, having a dedicated in-house finance professional to tackle this data will give a founder an extra layer of data driven analysis and insight that you would struggle to achieve with a professional who isn’t specialised in this area.

Their job description will usually be quite varied. Some of the tasks they may be responsible for include:

·???????Monitoring cash flow

·???????Managing expenses

·???????Determining profitability

·???????Forecasting and financial reporting

·???????Month-end reporting / Transactional accounting

·???????Reviewing/creating budgets

·???????Control implementation and Process improvement

·???????Analysing market information

·???????Helping to devise financial strategies.

·???????Overseeing more junior finance team members

What to look for in your 1st Finance Manager

Things to Consider when profiling the role:

·???????When you’re ready to hire a Finance Manager, you first need to think about who you want in the role.

·???????What are the skills, experience and qualifications they will need?

·???????Is there anything else you need to consider to make the right hiring decision?

·???????This could include the current team dynamic and future plans for the role and the company.

What to look for on their CV

Relevant sized company background:

To have the best chance of success your FM should ideally have been in a similar sized environment before, ideally from a growth background so they can deal with the constant change and demands of the business as it scales around them.

Having a close industry match can be essential in the regulated FinTech space or perhaps in the SaaS space where an understanding of KPI’s is needed.?But keep an open mind if you can, to gain a wider pool of candidates.

·???????Be sensitive to this and look at Revenue, Head Count and the growth journey of the business whilst they were there.

·???????Someone from too structured and large of a business will struggle with the lack of process and constant change.

Their CV should say:

You can see trends and commonalities on excellent SME FM’s CV’s and you should always prioritise these profiles as they give the best chance of success and long term best fit.

·???????You want to see a broad set of skills that cover the majority of aspects previously mentioned in this article, with the most critical non-negotiable skills being focussed around the candidates delivery of “Hands-on accounting”, Monitoring cash flow, Managing expenses, Determining profitability, Forecasting and financial reporting, Month-end reporting / Transactional accounting, Reviewing/creating budgets and Control implementation and Process improvement.

If you have unique industry related reporting such as may exist in a Fintech, then specific FCA regulated experience would be key.

The other aspects listed earlier would be happy luxuries – Such as strategic insight and analysis.

Soft skills:

The SME scale up space is an ever-changing environment, that requires a particular type of professional with a certain attitude and communication style.

There is no one type of personality that will guarantee success and you will find all manner of characters doing well and badly depending on the “Fit”.

I would suggest there are some trends to identify though that can help improve your statistical chances of tenure and “fit”.

·???????Self-determined – Self Motivated – Methodical / Diligent – Self Improver – Good communicator – Ability to Shift focus constantly – Ability to Triage Importance or action.

QUALIFICATIONS:

Typically, the path of study that leads to the job of a Finance Manager will be a degree in finance, accounting or similar, coupled with the completion of a professional accounting qualification such as ACA, CA, ACCA, CPA, CIMA, MBA or equivalent. This qualified pool of candidates are good long term options as their skillset allows them to accommodate the increasing complexity of the role as time goes on.

However, at this early stage of the business a qualification may not be needed due to the reduced complexity of accounting, so there will be a huge pool of candidates referred to as “QBE” or “Qualified by Experience”.?Candidates who have no qualification but have excellent, relevant experience for this type of role.

Point of note: As time goes on and the business grows, you may decide to increase the specialised nature of the Finance Manager role, or make the role more technically minded (Audit, Statutory accounting etc). When this happens, bringing a qualified accountant in, becomes an option to review again.

Their Salary Expectations:

Most Seed funded, Series A or B businesses will be looking to employ a Finance Manager somewhere between ￡55,000-70,000.??The exact amount will be dictated by the complexity of the role, the candidates’ competency and direct relevance to your business.

Using an external recruitment partner:

A great Finance Manager can be tricky to find, especially if you require them to have commercial insight specific to your space.?The metrics for different tech platforms can be widely different so finding someone specific to your space will need a more concerted search effort.

Zeren are a Global Technology focused Search firm who have the network and the tools to conduct this type of search and would be able to find an Elite candidate in this space who could drive your business forward.

For further information on how this process works, message?Simon Bennett ?who Leads our Finance Vertical.?[email protected]