Sr Managing Director, Group Head of Finance (Markel Group)

About this role

What part will you play? If you’re looking for a place where you can make a meaningful difference, you’ve found it. Markel Group, a Fortune 500 company, is a growing family of 24 operating companies. It is supported by over 22,000 associates and generates more than $15 billion in annual revenue, with our insurance operations at the core.

Our small holding company team “sits under” and supports these businesses, insuring they focus on serving their customers over the long term. Our mission is to be “the best home for our businesses,” while at the same time living the values that we call the Markel Style.

We aspire to build one of the world’s great companies by creating win-win-win outcomes for our customers, associates, and shareholders.

Markel Group has an attractive opportunity for a business-friendly, team-first finance leader to serve as Group Head of Finance. Markel Group is a holding company comprised of twenty-four operating companies with more than 22,000 associates and over $15 billion in annual revenues. Our cornerstone business, Markel Insurance, provides specialized insurance products that are not typically available in standard markets across the globe. Earnings from our insurance operations have been reinvested in a diversified portfolio of majority owned non-insurance affiliates that we collectively refer to as Markel Ventures.

Our goal at Markel is to continuously compound capital over a long period of time through empowering our leaders to manage their businesses with a long-term mindset. The team at the holding company supports these businesses so they can best serve their customers through enabling our culture, rooted in the Markel Style, allocating capital efficiently, selecting leaders of our businesses and performing the essential functions of a publicly traded company.

This role will report to the Markel Group and Markel Insurance CFO and oversee the day-to-day operations of the holding company finance function, providing strategic and operational leadership across the holding company accounting, SEC reporting, financial planning & analysis (FP&A), tax and controls workstreams while also engaging in strategic projects with executive leadership.

The Group Head of Finance will also have a unique opportunity to enhance the design of our finance engagement model with our Markel Ventures affiliates to ensure consistent financial accounting, controls and governance are in place while keeping to our philosophies of maintaining a minimalistic approach to the size and scale of our holding company operations and respecting each business’s autonomy.

Responsibilities include:

• Lead Markel Group accounting, consolidation, reporting and technical accounting efforts while understanding the nuances of our holding company structure and desire for balancing quality and consistency in financial reporting with maintaining autonomy within our businesses.    • Oversee our global tax function partnering with tax leadership on minimizing our tax obligations while ensuring our tax department is connected in with key transactions and initiatives • Participate in our external reporting efforts, including SEC reporting process and drafting, disclosure controls, and coordination with internal stakeholders, external auditors, and advisors to ensure accurate, timely filings • Devise the strategy and reporting for Markel Group FP&A – planning, forecasting, performance reporting and management insights; translating results into clear reports and narratives for senior leadership • Direct reports of this role will include the Chief Accounting officer, Global head of tax, holding company FP&A manager, and head of SOX controls at Markel Ventures. • Continuously improve finance controls, including SOX/ICFR partnership with control owners at our affiliates, including remediation governance and creating a scalable control design as the portfolio of companies evolves • Partner with senior leadership on enhancing our long-term engagement model for financial reporting matters with non-insurance affiliates balancing our needs as a public company with our desire to have affiliates operate with a high degree of independence • Communicate with business leaders across Insurance and non-insurance affiliates to align financial reporting, planning assumptions, and value-creation priorities • Collaborate with the insurance capital and treasury teams to apply regulated insurance capital rules to our strategies.  Build a working knowledge of regulator and rating agency capital regimes under which we operate.     • Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team; recruit and retain talent aligned with Markel’s values and the needs of a multi-entity, evolving organization • Drive simplification and modernization of finance processes, systems, and reporting—improving speed, accuracy, quality, and insight while reducing manual effort • Work on ad-hoc projects as assigned by the CFO or other members of Markel Group senior leadership. 

Success in this role requires demonstrated experience over time in the following competencies.  This role is not expected to have all of these competencies on day one.  We are looking for someone who is willing to take a long-term approach and build skill sets for future succession.  Critical to the role is bringing a positive attitude, a multi-year view on career path, an open mindset and a willingness to learn new skills to round out their current skill set.

• Enterprise finance leadership, including managing across accounting, reporting, FP&A, and controls with clear priorities and accountability.  • General understanding of SEC reporting and disclosures, tax regulations and accounting and • Building an effective performance management cadence—metrics, analysis, and narrative—to enable decision making • Designing and scaling finance controls and governance (including SOX/ICFR), with a practical, risk-based approach • Partnering with diverse operating comp

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