Financial Accountant

Challenger Limited

A range of products aimed at helping our customers during retirement. Our market-leading annuities provide a regular income, either for their lifetime or for a fixed term they choose.

Challenger is focused on providing customers with financial security for retirement. We do this by offering investment strategies that exhibit consistently superior performance, and by helping customers in retirement with safe and reliable income streams.

As Australia’s largest annuity provider, we provide regular income payments to thousands of Australian retirees. Our lifetime annuities protect retirees from the risk of running out of money late in life.

The regular retirement incomes we pay are backed by a high-quality investment portfolio, including fixed income and commercial property investments. These investments generate regular and predictable investment income, which we use to fund retirement incomes paid to our customers.

Join us as an Accountant in our Life Financial Control Team

• You'll be joining a tight knit, cohesive and collaborative team, who are passionate about supporting each other and identifying opportunities for continuous improvement in everything they do.
• Challenger Life is an interesting business with a complex balance sheet offering many opportunities to be involved in non-standard transactions in an environment that provides great exposure and variety for the finance professional that enjoys a challenge.
• At Challenger, we support you to “grow and realise your potential” and you can expect to learn new skills, whilst being supported with on the role coaching and development.
• We work flexibly from our Sydney CBD Office where you can expect to work 3 days in the office and 2 days from home. What you’ll do Life Financial Control is a team of 14 working towards the common goal of delivering our statutory results. Team members share common tasks and work collaboratively, as well as owning unique tasks depending on your role and individual experience. As an Accountant you’ll be assisting in management of the general ledger.  You’ll have your own portfolio of assigned entities/groups and will take the lead on the management of their books.   It will be your responsibility to deliver accurate and timely month end ledger close activities, and you’ll have a meticulous level of attention to detail when ensuring transactions have been booked correctly in various systems – and if they haven’t, investigate and resolve. Other key responsibilities will include:
• Monthly balance sheet reconciliations to source data and resolving reconciliation issues identified.
• Prepare consolidation entries for assigned groups & handling consolidation issues that arise.
• Run tax calculations where applicable and ensuring correct effective tax rate is achieved.
• BAS and Tax Return submissions.
• Prepare and post monthly recurring and ad-hoc journals.
• Preparation of statutory accounts for assigned entities where applicable.
• Assist with preparation of financial statements for CLC and explanatory notes.
• Preparation of audit files and dealing with auditors with regards to audit queries
• Ongoing review of procedures and processes to identify opportunities to improve efficiencies, facilitate process changes and ensure appropriate controls are enforced to manage risks. The skills you’ll need. You’ll be newly CA / CPA (or equivalent) qualified, or close to completion.  With strong analytical and problem-solving skills, you’ll have a track record of being able to break down problems, identify key issues and remedy with a range of different options. You’ll be a strong user of MS Office in particular Microsoft excel and be comfortable working with large amounts of data with the ability to synthesise into meaningful insights and analysis. You’ll also have
• Background of working within financial services
• Knowledge in Tax & GST Regulatory Requirements
• Understanding of APRA and ASIC Regulatory Requirements
• Good knowledge of financial instruments/products (e.g., derivatives, fixed income, equities) desired but not essential.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment, you’ll be as comfortable working collaboratively as you are when working independently.

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  Process Management and Ongoing Improvement

  Manage and improve organizational processes to minimize complexities and increase productivity

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  Accounts Payable and Receivable Management

  Maintain and update accounts payable and receivable, issue invoices and undertake reconciliations

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  Pipeline Management

  Prioritize and maintain pipeline while owning the sales cycle from discovery to close, in order to meet targets and goals

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  Collaboration

  Works with others by being open, clear in communication and listening to achieve goals

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  Prioritization

  Compares and ranks the relative importance &/or urgency of different tasks to identify the best order of actions

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  Attention to detail

  Accurately identifies and rectifies discrepancies or errors that exists in information and deliverables