SVP, Head of FP&A

Cross River • Fort Lee, NJ

10h • $250,000 - $300,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Cross River builds the infrastructure behind the world’s innovative financial products. Our technology and capital solutions power payments, cards, lending, and digital asset capabilities that move money safely, instantly, and inclusively — trusted by leading fintechs, enterprises, and disruptors across the globe. Our mission is to build the financial infrastructure that expands access and opportunity for all. Guided by a culture of collaboration, curiosity, and purpose, Cross River has been named one of American Banker’s Best Places to Work in Fintech year after year. Whether you’re designing code, solving regulatory puzzles, or developing strategy, you’ll join a team where innovation and integrity drive everything we do — and where your work helps shape the future of finance.

This candidate will be a direct report to the EVP, Chief Financial Officer. As SVP, Head of FP&A, you will be responsible for leading a team and partnering with business leaders in budgeting, forecasting, and presenting to the CEO and senior audiences the financial and business performance of the company. This person will play a critical leadership role in assisting the CFO and senior management to make profitable and data-driven strategic decisions. The selected candidate will build the FP&A and Business Partners functions, including business case and business partnering roles with heavy emphasis on hiring, development, process improvements, and systems.

Requirements

• Expert knowledge of financial planning; budgeting; and forecasting processes, including the ability to drive continuous improvement in these areas
• Deep understanding of the P&L and balance sheet, KPI driver maps and reporting methodologies
• Deep understanding of revenue drivers, sales optimization, margin management, and metrics cascades to provide insightful, performance inflecting decision support to senior executives and business leaders
• Strong interpersonal and collaboration skills to build relationships with senior stakeholders across the organization
• Ability to catalyze collaboration and to provide insightful recommendations to achieve common goals
• Inspirational leadership skills to foster a culture of innovation in FP&A, openness to change legacy ways-of-working, and technology acceptance within the FP&A team
• Ability to mentor and develop team members and drive skills development
• Executive-level storytelling, communication and presentation skills to effectively convey financial insights, analysis, algorithms and recommendations to senior executives, board members, and other stakeholders
• Ability to exploit advanced digital technologies to drive better outcomes for finance and the business
• Ability to explain how digital technologies interact with finance systems and business processes
• Bachelor’s degree required; Finance, Economics, or Business concentration with quant experience or CFA certification strongly preferred
• 10+ years of experience within the finance or FP&A function with experience leading and managing teams
• Track record of delivering insightful strategic decision support to the CFO, C-suite, and Board. Experience in long-term strategic planning, profitability improvement, capital efficiency, investment evaluation, financial feasibility studies, M&A support, and capital planning; preferably with global exposure
• Experience implementing a robust and dynamic forecasting model that incorporates scenario planning capabilities, predictive analytics, and data-driven insights to enhance decision support
• Proven ability to drive process improvements, automation, and operational efficiencies within FP&A
• Significant experience partnering, presenting to, and communicating with senior management
• Exposure to financial systems and tools, such as ERP systems, BI tools, and advanced financial planning systems and software that leverages AI/ML capabilities
• Has managed teams using advanced technology to generate actionable insights from operational and external market data, provides early anomaly detection, and does ML-driven predictive forecasting using multiple variables
• History of success managing relationships with technology providers, negotiating contracts, and ensuring compliance with procurement regulations
• Have led complex, multidisciplinary talent teams in new endeavors and delivering solutions
• Experience in establishing performance monitoring capabilities, including the ability to align the organization on performance goals, identify emerging risks and opportunities, and conduct effective business performance reviews
• Have led efforts to integrate FP&A's data and analytics activities with other internal analytics groups
• Experience interpreting data science and analytics outputs

Nice To Haves

• Experience with process improvement and digital project management frameworks (e.g., lean, agile) preferred

Responsibilities

• Lead an effective financial planning, budgeting and forecasting cycle: Lead an FP&A team that manages the execution -- and continuous improvement -- of long-range financial planning, annual budgeting, and forecasting processes
• Use planning, budgeting and forecasting to anticipate in-year decisions, mitigate risks, model and assess a range of scenarios, and reprioritize initiatives.
• Establish an integrated planning process that synchronizes strategic, financial and operational plans to achieve alignment with business strategy
• Support accounting to create credible pro-forma financial statements
• Organize FP&A to provide world-class decision support at scale: Create high-performing teams that produce insightful strategic decision support for the CFO, C-Suite and board on major issues including profitability and cash flow improvement, strategic planning, investment evaluation/prioritization, and M&A support
• Design & implementation of management reporting aligned to the operating model
• Broaden FP&A's scale of support for operational decisions by leading efforts to embed FP&A's acumen into well-designed decision support tools
• Catalyze organizational-wide relationships to identify analytics partnership opportunities, promote a holistic view of business performance, and improve planning assumptions and data quality
• Lead a proactive and predictive analytics capability: Champion the use of predictive analytics, including AI/ML, in forecasting, profitability improvement, cost analytics, and scenario planning
• Continuously optimize the organizational model for Data and Analytics to drive efficiency and standardization
• Steward and maintain trust in analytics by instituting governance mechanisms for the insights in routine or ad hoc business support, management reports, algorithms used for analysis, and automation for analytic inputs
• Coach the FP&A team to go beyond identifying variances to isolate core issue drivers and recommend value-creating or corrective actions that improve performance improvement
• Help FP&A managers prioritize their team's queue of ad hoc support requests to ensure the appropriate balance between ad hoc and proactive analysis
• Oversee the evolution of FP&A’s technology portfolio: Lead the evolution of, and effectively manage, the FP&A technology roadmap and ensure alignment with both the finance and enterprise roadmaps
• Manage relationships and negotiate with technology providers while ensuring compliance with procurement policies
• Manage, co-lead and resource decision support tool creation and the portfolio of FP&A’s digital products from decision dashboards and simulators to scenario modeling tools
• Improve performance-monitoring capabilities for faster sensing and responding: Demonstrate expert-level knowledge of the organization's business drivers to establish a capability for reporting and monitoring business performance and KPIs
• Keep the organization aligned on enterprise performance goals
• Identify emerging risks and opportunities
• Monitor leading indicators to identify initiative delivery and operational performance gaps, drive action or alternative approaches to close
• Support the CFO in effective business performance reviews with the business on a routine basis
• Display inspirational and visionary FP&A team leadership: Turn FP&A into a top choice for high-performing digital talent by encouraging innovation, skills development, and mentoring
• Foster a culture of innovation, openness to change, and technology acceptance by developing D&A talent and maturing the capability of the organization.
• Support FP&A analysts and finance business partners in the transition to a primarily technology-centric decision support delivery model while simultaneously improving the skills necessary to improve in-person decision support

Benefits

• Cross River is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Cross River does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive