Finance Specialist

Background Information - Job-specific PSC as a business unit sees some of the largest annual delivery in all of UNOPS. The number of programmes and size of delivery has increased immensely over the last 4 years, with commensurate growth in the complexity of the client requirements. In addition, the continued roll-out of new IT systems and the overhaul of processes has delivered new efficiencies and raised new challenges around financial controls. In 2020 the external environment and global context changed drastically, increasing the risks faced by global portfolio and requiring greater flexibility and depth in the provision of management financial information to enable agile and impactful decisions. The Finance Specialist (Financial Oversight) position reflects a shift in focus in the PSC Finance team away from transactional processing and towards a greater emphasis on management information and strategic analysis. It has a global perspective across the entire portfolio, and supports the Finance, Budget and Oversight Advisor and the Senior Management Team in the design and delivery of the unit’s financial strategy. The Finance Specialist (Financial Oversight) maintains a global, long-term perspective with a focus on continuous innovation and process improvement, and works effectively across the wider PSC team to build the capacity of field-based finance and support services personnel. Functional Responsibilities

Under the overall guidance of the Deputy Director of the peace and security cluster and the supervision of the Finance, Budget and Oversight Advisor the incumbent’s responsibilities are as follows:

PSC strategic Support

Reduce reputational Risk by ensuring the timely client financial reporting and effective day to day liaison with the main client UNMAS.
Liaise with the UNMAS finance team as well as the internal stakeholders, the portfolio teams of the Peace & Security Cluster, Integrated Practice Advice and Support (IPAS) and Finance Group in the HQ to ensure that the reporting standards and timelines are in line with the donor needs and requirements as well as the organizational directives.
Ensure the financial information is compiled and maintained in a strategically relevant manner to inform funding decisions.
Optimize the use of the finance team dashboards, ensure the accurate data input for the client reporting schedule, advance financing, refund letters etc.
Provide input for, and participate in, the quarterly external finance reviews.

Budgetary Control

Provide Support to Portfolio Managers (PMOs) on the budget development process during the financial agreement inception phase, ensuring alignment with agreed client reporting schedules and target cost recovery and escalating deviation from the agreed standards for further review.
Monitor expenditures against approved budgets on a quarterly basis in terms of cash spent, budget category tolerance, savings and commitments and advise the portfolio managers on the course of action.
Produce Management accounts on a monthly basis and discuss it with the finance advisor prior to the senior management team meeting, review the management accounts monthly and initiate adjustments to the wrongly allocated expenditures where necessary.
Ensure accurate monthly cost recovery of the PSC Locally Managed Direct Cost (LMDC) and Centrally Managed Direct Cost (CMDC), analyze the main trends of the PSC cost recovery mechanisms and discuss the main findings with the Finance Advisor.

Process improvement & Compliance

Ensure the timely and accurate completion of the monthly, quarterly and year-end accounting processes.
Provide input on behalf of UNOPS to the ongoing audits in the client side.
Action general audit recommendations from the Internal Audit and Investigations Group (IAIG) and the UN board of Audit (UNBOA).
Provide input for the European Commission (EC) verification on behalf of PSC Finance unit.
Proactively identify compliance issues and risk throughout the portfolios, discuss with the finance advisor and provide guidance to the relevant stakeholders.
Provide input for the development of the Standard Operating Procedures.
Continuously strive towards identifying and eliminating inefficient practices and optimization of processes.
Ensure that cash management of client funds is administered in a timely and effective manner, including the tracking of remittance and any advance financing requests.
Provide operational support with Accounts Payable and Cash Management processes as required.

Support to Capacity Building

Work closely with the Portfolio teams as well as the Finance Units in the HQ to enable a continuous flow of information, knowledge and best practice sharing.
Providing daily guidance and training to the PSC unit on finance aspects of the work, as well as participate in training developments. Identify areas that need improvement and initiate capacity building activities, such as training, production of guidance notes, design and Conduct finance induction for the newly joined colleagues.
Provide technical guidance and support to field office staff as pertaining to common financial queries and processes.
Provide technical guidance and on-the-job training to the PMOs to ensure work standards are achieved in terms of financial aspect of the operations.
Provide any operational support to the PSC as required.

Education/Experience/Language requirements Education

Advanced University Degree (Masters Degree or equivalent) with a minimum of 5 years of relevant experience; or
First Level University Degree (Bachelors Degree or equivalent) with a minimum of 7 years of relevant experience.

Experience

Relevant experience is defined as experience in financial management services in either public or private sector organizations.
Experience conducting financial and budget analysis is required.
ERP experience is required.

Language