Finance Risk & Controls Lead (Financial Reporting)

Job Type: Permanent

Location: Edinburgh / Birmingham, with normally a minimum of 2 days a week working in the office and the rest working at home. We believe that benefits both you and our business, helping ensure that you can balance a successful career with your life outside of work while maximising the value of face-to-face stakeholder engagement. 

Flexible working: All roles are open to part-time, job-share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you and balancing this with business requirements during the recruitment process. You can read more about flexible working here.

Closing Date: Tuesday 12th May

Salary and benefits: £55,000 - £70,000 plus an indicative bonus range of 16%-32%, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more. 

The Role 

Are you ready to make a real impact? As our Finance Risk & Controls Lead, you’ll be at the heart of strengthening how Finance identifies, owns and manages financial reporting risks and controls. This role is suited to a technically strong financial reporting professional with an accounting background, who understands what effective controls look like in practice and can support Finance teams to design, operate and evidence them well.

This is not just a role — it’s an opportunity to influence. You’ll work closely with Line 1 teams and senior Finance leaders to support them in identifying reporting risks, building robust controls, and demonstrating that those controls operate effectively. You will not own the control framework or operate controls yourself; instead, you’ll provide expert challenge, guidance and assurance, helping teams embed consistent, high‑quality control practices across end‑to‑end financial reporting processes.

The focus of the role is on financial reporting risk and key reporting controls, ensuring risks are clearly understood, controls are well articulated, and weaknesses are identified and addressed early. As a trusted advisor, you’ll combine technical accounting credibility with pragmatism and influence — supporting Finance leaders to take confident ownership of their risks and controls while maintaining appropriate independence and challenge. This is a delivery‑focused role offering real scope to build your profile, gain senior exposure, and drive meaningful improvement where it matters most.

What we are looking for

Support Line 1 Finance teams to identify, articulate and document financial reporting risks and controls across close, consolidation, accounting judgements and disclosures

 Provide expert challenge on control design, ensuring controls are proportionate, clearly defined and aligned to the underlying accounting risk.

Lead and coordinate first‑line control testing and review activity, assessing design and operating effectiveness and feeding back clear, practical findings to control owners.

Support Finance teams to strengthen evidence quality and consistency, ensuring controls are demonstrable and sustainable.

Identify themes, systemic issues and emerging risks across financial reporting controls and support teams to address root causes.

Contribute insight and analysis to governance and oversight forums, presenting a clear view of control health and areas requiring attention. 

Act as a knowledgeable stakeholder to assurance activity, providing subject‑matter input and challenge, while maintaining clear Line 1 ownership within the business.

We want to hire the whole version of you. 

We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If your experience looks different from what we’ve advertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role, we’d love to hear from you. 

If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best. 

We’re reviewing applications as they come in, so apply early to avoid missing out. 

• Find out more about working at Standard Life 

• Guide for Candidates: standardlifeplc.pagetiger.com/guideforcandidates
• Find or get answers from our colleagues: www.standardlifeplc.com/careers/talk-to-us