Accounts Receivable Analyst - German Speaker

Job description and person specification

Exciting opportunity to join Beazley's Credit Control team. We are looking for a permanent Accounts Receivable Analyst - German Speaker.

Who We Are

Beazley is a specialist insurance company with over 30 years' experience helping people, communities and businesses to manage risk all around the world. Our mission is to provide beautifully designed insurance, innovating to give our clients the maximum benefit with minimum hassle.

Our products are wide ranging, from cyber & tech insurance to marine, healthcare, financial institutions and contingency; covering risks such as the weather, film production or protection from deadly weapons.

Our Culture

We employ over 1,500 people globally, hosting a wonderful diversity of cultures, experiences and backgrounds. We are proud of our family-feel culture at Beazley that empowers our staff to work from when and where they want, in an adult environment that's big on collaboration, diversity of thought & personal accountability.

Our three core values inspire the way we work and how we treat our people & customers - 1) Be bold 2) Strive for better 3) Do the right thing. Upholding these values every day has enabled us to become an innovative and responsive organisation in touch with the changing world around us - our ambitious L&D & Sustainability targets are testament to this.

We encourage internal career progression at Beazley, giving you all the tools you need to drive your own career here, such as iLearn (our own learning & development platform), LinkedIn Learning, our mentorship program and external qualification sponsorship. As a Beazley employee, you also get access to our fantastic array of benefits which include commuting reimbursement, free in-office lunch, six months parental leave and a lifestyle allowance, amongst many others.

Job Title: Accounts Receivable Analyst - German Speaker

Division: Finance Operations - Credit Control

Reports To: Assistant Credit Control Manager

Key Relationships: Internal: Underwriting, Claims, Finance, UK & RoW Operations teams, Digital Operations teams, Digital Services Team, IT, Agresso Support, AR Support team and Broker Relations

External: Brokers, 3rd Party service providers and external credit controllers

Job Summary:

Ownership of open debt, collections and cash allocation including:

• Daily credit control processing;
• Business partnering with operations underwriting and business teams;
• Managing relationships with the brokers, underwriting and the business;
• Daily data validation, reconciliation and analysis;
• Monthly processing, controls & reporting;
• Monthly reconciliations / financial accounting;
• Continuous improvement of the credit control function;

Key Responsibilities:

• Daily credit control technical processing;
• Debt collection activity in line with Beazley collection strategies (Dunning cycle).
• Allocation of daily and legacy unallocated cash against open debt items. Maintain a cumulative record of all unallocated cash items including which broker, status, comment on why unallocated and audit trial of actions.
• Supporting cash allocation by chasing brokers for missing payment details/remittances and chasing UCO & Underwriters for missing policy booking.
• Optimise auto cash allocation through root cause analysis of cash blockers, drive mitigating actions with brokers, operations, and digital IT.
• Assist with facilitating DD collections, rejections and reconciliation liaising with brokers as required.
• Identify open items to escalate into cancelation process.
• Calculation and preparation of refund, commission and legal fee payments;

o Operate in line with credit control financial control framework.

• Business partnering with operations, underwriting and business teams

• Proactive debt management by UW division and broker.

• Work with the business to provide finance insight to collections and cash activity.

• Provide MI on aged debt, unallocated cash and collections patterns.

• Work with operational teams to align operational metrics to finance metrics.

• Assist with product implementations, migrations and system developments providing finance input to process and system requirements, and testing.

• Identify and raise data quality issues, customer facing pain points, broker behaviour trends.

• Collaborate with Broker relations to optimise broker experience and make Beazley easy to do business with.

• Managing relationships with the brokers, underwriters and the business;

o Liaison with Beazley underwriters, Claims and Finance staff as appropriate to resolve account queries.

o Managing internal / external payment queries and escalating as appropriate to ensure service levels are met.

o Provide professional service to brokers and other external partners in all interactions.

o Provide business divisions with a monthly aged debt summary for use in the renewals process.

• Daily data validation, reconciliation and analysis

• Review daily premium data including E2E Rec and liaise with IT and operations teams to resolve data quality issues and unusual transactions.
• Review policy feeds for inappropriate due dates and raise with operations team for immediate correction.
• Review and reconcile bank data to Agresso or cash allocation excel.
• Manage internal transfer/payments process including identifying and generating payment requests, monitoring actual payment activity and ensuring relevant journals are booked to GL.

o Analyse cash collection and allocation trends.

• Monthly processing, controls & reporting;
• Payment and management of Broker DD commission and ad hoc cash from customer commissions.
• Management, tracking and oversight of cancellation process.
• Support monthly reporting of cumulative unallocated cash by entity, broker and status by providing insight into cash blockers.
• Support monthly reporting of open debt - top 20 items (in each age bracket) and trends by providing insightful commentary on debt recoverability.
• Effectively communicate and report progress and escalate issues as required to senior management.
• Support six monthly debt recoverability reviews across entity and market.

• Monthly reconciliations / financial accounting;
• Monthly bank, debtor, UAC, transfer account reconciliations highlighting and recording transaction movements, for manager review. Working across credit control to ensure process is consistent.

• Continuous improvement of the credit control function.
• Ensure that appropriate standards are established and complied with.
• Ensure all processes and controls are fully documented and up to date.
• Use business knowledge and understanding of credit control processes to propose improvements and enhancements to process and systems, liaising with the business and IT as required.
• Support new functionality and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) as required

General

It is important that within all your interactions both internally and externally you adhere to Beazley's core values - Being Bold, Striving for Better, and Doing the Right Thing - as they contribute to an internal environment of teamwork and promote a positive brand image and experience to our external customers. We also expect Beazley employees to:

• Comply with Beazley procedures, policies and regulations including the code of conduct which incorporates the PRA and FCA Conduct. Undertake training on Beazley policies and procedures as delivered by your line manager, the Culture & People or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) either directly, via e-learning or the learning management system.
• Display business ethics that uphold the interests of all our customers.
• Ensure all interactions with customers are focused on delivering a fair outcome, including having the right products for their needs.
• Comply with any specific responsibilities necessary for your role as outlined by your line manager, the Culture & People or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) and ensure you keep up to date with developments in these areas. This may include, amongst others, Beazley's underwriting control standards, Beazley's claims control standards, other Beazley standards and customer relationship management.
• Carry out additional responsibilities as individually notified, either through your objectives or through the learning management system. These may include membership of any Beazley committees or working groups.

Personal Specification:

• Education and Qualifications
• General accounting knowledge.

o Educated to A level or equivalent.

o CICM/AAT/ACCA/CIMA qualified advantageous

• Skills and Abilities
• Fluent German speaker.
• The ability to manage time, meet deadlines and prioritise.
• Advanced analytical analysis and data manipulation skills are essential .
• Ability to review, validate and reconcile data between multiple systems is essential.
• Strong accounting and finance control skills are essential.
• Strong presentation skills are essential .
• Strong underwriting and finance system interrogation skills, ability to identify data quality, validation, and transfer issues are essential.

• Accurate and numerate, attention to detail.
• Excellent communicator, able to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing with internal and external stakeholders and influence outcomes.
• Self motivated, able to work on own initiative and use problem solving skills to proactively resolve issues.
• Ability to work independently.
• Strong computer skills.

• Knowledge and Experience
• Experience credit control collections and cash allocations essential.
• Experience of process / system improvement in a Finance team is essential.
• Experience of working in a Lloyds/general insurance environment is desirable.
• Experience and knowledge of Xchanging processes advantageous, in particular knowledge of premiums and claims processing requirements.
• Familiar with accounting principles.
• Advanced knowledge of Excel.
• Experience of FIS GetPaid, GoCardless, Agresso, MyBeazley or similar underwriting systems / credit control systems / broker portals is desirable.

• Aptitude and Disposition
• Outcome focused; self motivated and enthusiastic.
• Professional approach to successfully interact with internal service company staff (underwriters, underwriting assistants, business managers and finance) as well as external contacts, in particular Brokers.
• Ability and willingness to roll up sleeves and get involved in detail.
• Ability to interact with individuals at all levels of the company.

• Competencies

• Concern for quality, Relationship builder, teamwork, good communicator, attention to detail, Initiative, business awareness, advocate for change, problem solver.

The rewards:

The opportunity to connect and build long-lasting professional relationships while advancing your career with a growing, global organization

• Attractive base compensation and discretionary performance related annual bonus
• Private medical insurance coverage for both you and your dependents
• Company paid life assurance and long term disability insurance
• Pension with 10% employer contribution, plus a further matched contribution up to 2.5%
• 25 days of annual leave (prorated for 1st calendar year of employment), plus public holidays, with the ability to flex the religious bank holidays to suit your religious beliefs, subject to approval. Additional annual leave purchase is also available up to a maximum of five additional days per year.
• Up to 2.5 days matched paid leave for volunteering at a charity of your choice and 5 days paid leave to provide or arrange care for a dependent with a long term care need annually
• Up to £550 reimbursement towards home office setup
• Free in-office lunch and monthly lifestyle allowance
• Monthly travel allowance or annual season ticket
• The opportunity to save for, and purchase, shares of Beazley stock
• Six months fully paid parental leave, regardless of how you come to parenthood
• Company paid sabbatical up to 12 weeks after 10 years of continued service
• Support with exam/study leave and fees for relevant qualifications related to furthering education
• Smart working policy and flexible working culture, trusting our employees to do what works best for them, their role and the needs of the business

Don't meet all the requirements? At Beazley we're committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. If you're excited about this role but your experience doesn't perfectly align with every requirement and qualification in the job specification, we encourage you to apply anyway. You might just be the right candidate for this, or one of our other roles.