Accounting Specialist - Reconciliations and Certifications Oversight

Close and Consolidation Team

Full-Time

Boston, MA or Springfield, MA

The Opportunity

As an Accounting Specialist for Reconciliations and Certifications Oversight, you will wholly manage the process of execution of accounts reconciliations, certifications and collection of management letters of representation process, closely collaborating with internal and external customers to execute on financial reporting controls.

The Team

The Close and Consolidation team is a high-profile team in the Controller's organization comprised of talented accounting professionals who possess diverse ranges of experiences and backgrounds. Overall responsibility for our team is month end and quarterly close consolidation process and oversight of general ledger. Our team has a high business acumen and is driven to provide timely and accurate financial information to our customers. We pride ourselves on working with agility and being a reliable source of information in the organization. We strive to continuously improve and achieve results by actively listening, seeking, understanding and creating solutions as a unified team. The team continues to grow due to the growing number of projects and initiatives that we are part of.

• Demonstrate business acumen to ensure the controls are executed timely, accurately and the issues are raised to leadership attention when necessary. Communicate effectively with various stakeholders, including senior management and external auditors
• Manage account reconciliation and certification process, focusing on the following activities:
  • Perform monthly quality assurance testing of a sample of reconciliation to assess compliance to the control, and produce report summarizing results, assessment, and action items for any deficiencies or improvements noted
  • At the outset, partner with Close and Consolidation leader to re-design quality assurance testing program for a more effective program, and build a QA testing monthly report. The role is expected to continuously improve the program as necessary
  • Track action items, remediation or improvements, ensuring timely and effective implementation as agreed
  • Manage monthly and quarterly processes including reconciliation and documentation of uncertified balances, aging, management reporting and signoff for the period
  • Work with offshore team members and business stakeholders to assign ownership of unassigned and "not-my-account" account strings
  • Review (expanded) audit of reconciliation and certifications
  • Review and audit of static account balances - work with business to document static balances and remediation as needed
  • Approval of new accounts and chart of accounts rationalization
  • Coordination with business stakeholders, reporting teams and financial systems teams of mapping to chart of accounts

• Ownership of suspense accounts reconciliations and balance and activity clearing
  • Coordinate efforts between offshore teams, subsidiaries controllership, investment controllership, investment operations on monthly suspense balances reconciliations and clearing

• Assume a supporting function with respect to the late journal entries approval and processing and capturing of the unbooked adjustments summary process
  • Provide support to Head of Close and Consolidation on approval of late entries.
  • Provide support to Head of Close and Consolidation on documentation and reporting of unbooked

• Own account reconciliation and certification tool (Cadency) controls
  • Oversee the execution of certification controls process on an agreed upon regular basis
  • Own approval of additions and deactivations of users within the tool
  • Provide support to the Head of Close with Cadency task support, as needed/ appropriate

• Work in a fast paced and agile work environment to meet or exceed deadlines
• Maximize the value and optimize reports created by the team
• Prepare insightful analysis to convey the underlying story to the key constituents timely, in a clear and concise manner
• Research and interpret changes in accounting policies, competitive landscape, and emerging trends
• Drive continuous improvement and efficiencies within the reporting processes beyond the scope of responsibilities listed

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or related field
• 6+ years of experience working with audited statements, including disclosures OR 3+ years working experience with audited statutory and GAAP reporting in life insurance companies.

• Master's degree in Accounting, Finance, or related field
• CPA or advanced degree in accounting
• Knowledge of advanced insurance and investment statutory accounting principles
• Strong demonstrated financial analysis and reporting background
• Experience with general ledger reporting cubes and warehouses; and the ability to gather data elements from various sources
• Knowledge of business intelligence tools, applications, and/or queries to create and configure new reports, dashboards & decision-making analytics
• Skilled in validating and test data & reports to ensure accuracy and quality
• Other competencies required include customer focus, change & innovation, strategic thinking, relationship building & influencing
• Expert knowledge of Excel and PowerPoint

• Regular meetings with the Management, Close and Consolidation team
• Focused one-on-one meetings with your manager
• Access to mentorship opportunities
• Networking opportunities including access to Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, African American, women, LGBTQ, veteran and disability-focused Business Resource Groups
• Access to learning content on Degreed and other informational platforms
• Your ethics and integrity will be valued by a company with a strong and stable ethical business with industry leading pay and benefits