Finance Manager Emma Wright has been a member of the Insurance Business Support team for Momentum since the business began in 2010. She has seen the company develop from an enthusiastic start-up to a market-leading provider of support services for insurance brokers. She tells us what it’s like to be a finance manager for Momentum.
My finance manager’s job description includes everything from team management to credit control to providing financial assistance to our partners, who are Appointed Representatives. For the first two years, it was just me in the department, but now we have a team of six and are very busy. As our reputation in the market has grown, so have the number of ARs wanting to join us, and we’re constantly building relationships with more and more insurers.
I deal with the HR side of things for the team, doing their one-to-ones, helping them with any problems they have. I hold team meetings and make sure they are up to date with what’s going on in the company and with our ARs. Whenever there’s a change of staff in the team, I help the new people settle in – new people have fresh ideas which we need. There’s always more than one way of doing things, and we’re always looking for ways to improve what we do.
A finance manager’s job description probably doesn’t include some of the things I do each day – like baking and drinking the occasional gin! – but while I’m in the office, my day is pretty varied. I need to be really organised, because the team and I look after our internal finance tasks, as well as supporting the ARs with their accounting services. We handle all client money for our partners, including cash collection and insurer reconciliation.
8am: First thing, I go through the inboxes and see what I can delete – things we won’t have to deal with like duplicate requests and enquiries. I’ll prioritise the work, whether it’s management accounts or commission reports for the ARs.
9am: I’ll go through my own emails and reply to any urgent ones. I’ll deal with finance agreements, process cancellations, answer queries and solve problems if I can.
10am: At 10am, I’ll hold a one-to-one with one of the team members, making sure they’re OK and reviewing their performance over the past month. If there are any problems, we’ll talk things through with them, and I’ll see what I can do to help them.
11am: I might do some work on the management accounts which provide the business with information to make day-to-day decisions. Alternatively, I might put together management information for the directors.
1pm: When I get back from lunch, I’ll check whether the team have any queries they need help with and deal with those. We’re always looking to try to improve processes so sometimes things come up that we can use to do this. I’ll also look at my emails again for any from ARs that I need to deal with.
2pm: I spend time speaking to the ARs each afternoon. While the team deal with the day-to-day issues, I’ll manage the insurer relationships. By keeping in touch with them, I can understand the challenges they face and help solve them.
3pm: The team would say that the most important part of my job is processing the payroll, which includes both salaries and pensions. I make them a priority and get them done on time every month to keep everyone happy.
4pm: Part of my role is dealing with problems for our bigger accounts or larger insurers. I make sure I keep up to date with anything that crops up during the day and see what I can do to help get things back on track.
I love dealing with the ARs, talking to them and sorting things out for them. Being in the finance team, they often think I’m calling with bad news, but I try to give them good news – or get others to give them the bad news! I love the challenge of the job, it’s crazy busy, but I wouldn’t change it.
The ARs, as challenging as they can be, keep you on your toes, and it’s never boring. They all want something different, and so being flexible is a must. It’s important I adapt to their needs, and work in different ways with each of them as they all run their businesses in their own way. We need to support them as we’re only successful if they are.
