If you know your career is stronger than your CV, you have the same problem as Alex.

Joined 90 days into the FCA Section 166 notice that had been issued the previous quarter. The prior CFO had left within the first month of the notice; the finance function was carrying a three-year failed remediation programme. Brief from the board was narrow: close the 166, pass the next external audit clean, retain the trading desks.

Selected achievements

• Closed the Section 166 remediation in 11 months against the firm's original 22-month plan; FCA supervisory rating lifted from red to green at first post-closure review (FCA closure letter, 2024).
• Removed £14.2m of annual run-rate cost through a finance-and-risk operating-model redesign while maintaining front-office control-function headcount.
• Delivered the first clean external audit in the firm's history, zero management letter points, FY24, PwC lead partner.
• Rebuilt the board finance pack from a 94-page monthly document to a 22-page decision pack. Chair recorded the change as the year's most useful governance improvement in the 2024 NED survey.
• Led the £180m regulatory-capital raise executed in Q2 2024 under Basel III tightening; priced inside the preceding comparable issuance by 35 bps (Financial Times, June 2024).
• Reopened the Luxembourg regulated entity with the CSSF inside 8 months, against a peer average for re-authorisation of 14 months.

Position on departure / current status. Business is in its third clean cycle. Board has confirmed internal succession plan for the CFO seat.

Joined as the firm approached its £1bn AUM inflection, with a finance function designed for a £300m business. Five-year brief was to build the platform to support £2.5bn AUM, absorb three confirmed acquisitions, and close out the post-Brexit legal-entity restructuring. Finance headcount 180 at start, 640 at end.

Selected achievements

• Scaled finance, operations and risk from 180 to 640 heads over 38 months while holding attrition at under 8%, against an industry average over the same period of 19%.
• Delivered seven consecutive clean external audits (2018–2023), including two during the COVID operational-risk period when 62% of peer firms recorded at least one qualification.
• Integrated three acquisitions, combined transaction value £310m, all completed on-schedule and within revised integration targets, delivering £43m annual run-rate cost removal (Reuters coverage).
• Executed two regulatory-capital raises totalling £420m, including the March 2020 issuance priced at the tightest spread of any asset-manager raise in the quarter.
• Rebuilt EMEA working-capital cycle from 94 to 41 days on the trading book (FY22), releasing £6.2m of liquidity and improving group interest cover by 1.3 turns (Financial News, March 2022).
• Chaired the post-Brexit legal-entity restructuring: 11 entities, 4 jurisdictions covering the FCA, CSSF, CBI, and FINMA regimes; zero tax leakage, completed 90 days inside the planned window.
• Shortlisted in Financial News "CFO of the Year" 2022 (shortlist announcement).

Position on departure. AUM at £2.4bn (brief: £2.5bn), EBIT at £312m, finance function rated Tier 1 by all three major benchmark studies conducted during her tenure.

Hired as group close lead with an explicit succession line to the CFO role. Reporting remit widened within six months to include investor relations and, eighteen months in, the carve-out of the group's non-core European insurance book, a transaction the board had deferred for three years.

Selected achievements

• Reduced group close time from 14 to 6 working days over 18 months, then held at 6 days for the remainder of her tenure without incident.
• Led the £190m carve-out of the European insurance book to Allianz affiliates; completed 7 weeks inside the original timetable (Chartwell press release).
• Authored the investor-reporting redesign adopted in FY16; analyst coverage forecast accuracy improved from ±8% to ±3% of consensus over the subsequent four quarters.
• Represented the CFO on the Audit Committee for the year of the 2016 external auditor rotation, managed the transition from EY to Deloitte with zero adverse opening entries.
• Mentored three direct reports into Group Financial Controller roles at listed peers; each promoted within 14 months of moving on.

Reason for leaving. External approach to the Group CFO role at Keswick Vale Asset Management.

Graduate-to-senior-manager career at a top-ten firm. Specialised in regulated asset-management and private-equity valuation audits; promoted on the accelerated track, four years to manager against the firm's five-year median.

Selected achievements

• Promoted to Senior Manager 18 months ahead of the firm's median timeline for the FS Audit practice.
• Audit lead on 14 regulated asset managers, largest client £1.8bn AUM; zero prior-period restatements across her portfolio.
• Authored the firm's internal technical manual on IFRS 13 valuation hierarchy applied to private-credit books, still in use at the firm in 2024.
• Qualified ACA in 2010; named on the 2013 "Partner-Track Cohort" list before exiting to take the Deputy CFO role at Chartwell.

Reason for leaving. Move from external assurance into operating finance at Chartwell Group plc.