Joining us as a Finance Analyst, you'll play a key role in supporting our Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) and Central Support functions, helping to provide the insight that drives business performance and strategic decision-making.

Working closely with the Finance Manager – Support & Tech, Finance Manager – FP&A and Head of FP&A, you'll contribute to the forecasting, budgeting and long-term planning processes, ensuring our financial plans are robust, accurate and aligned with Society objectives.

In this varied and high-impact role, you'll support the consolidation of budgets, forecasts and long-range plans across multiple business areas, while producing timely and accurate weekly, monthly and quarterly performance reporting. You'll analyse financial results, providing clear variance analysis that identifies key trends, risks and opportunities, helping stakeholders understand business performance and make informed decisions.

You'll also be responsible for developing and maintaining complex financial models, including scenario planning and sensitivity analysis, transforming detailed financial data into meaningful insights for senior leaders. Your analysis and reporting will help support the preparation of materials for Executive and Board-level reviews, ensuring key stakeholders have the information they need to shape future strategy.

Collaboration is at the heart of this role. You'll partner with stakeholders across the business to improve reporting, challenge assumptions and enhance decision-making.

Alongside this, you'll help drive continuous improvements to planning, forecasting and reporting processes, contributing to a culture of efficiency, accuracy and commercial focus across the finance function.

We are looking for someone who is either a professionally qualified Accountant (ACCA/ACA/CIMA) or who is in the process of completing their qualification.

You’ll bring a strong commercial and financial acumen and be confident in your ability to develop an understanding of the key drivers of the business area.

You’ll be confident in your ability to challenge current practices and processes with a drive for continuous improvement.

Essential to this role will be your advanced excel skills and experience in manipulating large data quantities.

As well as your ability to work collaboratively with both cross functional and finance colleagues, you’ll also be comfortable in working independently, using your own initiative and be able to demonstrate a proactive approach to issue resolution.

Due to the nature of this role, it will be essential that you can bring organisational and time management skills and be confident in your ability to deliver to deadlines.

Preferably you’ll have experience within the Retail industry- although this is not essential.

Everyone is welcome here We’re happy to make reasonable adjustments so that all our candidates can show us how they’ll perform their role. There is a section in the application form where you can provide any additional information. Please use this section to include any reasonable adjustments you need, and we’ll do our best to support you through our recruitment process

What benefits are available to you?

In addition to our competitive salaries, our colleagues also benefit from:

Reward and Benefits

• Fantastic colleague discount - Reward ££’s and discounts across our Retail and Funeral businesses.
• Retail discounts- our hub offers colleagues access to hundreds of exclusive retail discounts, savings on days out and holiday discounts.
• Colleague Dividend- We pay a share of our profits to eligible colleagues as a thank you for their contribution to our success.
• Colleague recognition- we celebrate our colleague’s achievements both personally and professionally
• Personalised learning and development- with easy access to a wide range of training programmes
• Paid time for volunteering- we encourage our colleagues to spend three days per year taking part in volunteering, fully paid for by us.
• Enhanced family friendly policies- to help you feel fully supported during any significant life events.

   

  Wellbeing

• Annual health check kit and virtual GP – Finger prick blood test kit, that is sent to Square Healthcare for your personal healthcare report, and access to a virtual GP 7 days a week 8am to 8pm for you and your family.
• Colleague assistance programme – to support you and your family when you need it the most.
• Healthcare Cashplan- your wellbeing is important, so you’ve got the opportunity to contribute into a voluntary plan that helps pay towards a range of healthcare expenses.
• Company sick pay – We offer company sick pay to colleagues so that you can focus on getting better and returning to work in full health.
• Life Assurance- after an initial qualifying period, you’ll get free life assurance cover, that pays your nominated beneficiary if you die while you’re working for us.
• We’ve got you – our colleague wellbeing campaign, making wellbeing benefits and resources accessible and relevant to the role that you do.
• Give as you earn- helping you support charities which mean something to you.

   

  Financial Wellbeing

• iTrent Financial Wellbeing (Wagestream)- offers something for all our colleagues, whether you want to track your finances, save some money, or access up to 50% of your earned pay flexibly in a way that suits you.
• The Money Co-op – Free access to support all aspects of your financial wellbeing, such as savings and loans at competitive rates.
• Salary Sacrifice schemes:
  • Electric Vehicle scheme – Option to purchase your EV through salary sacrifice
  • Share Incentive Plan (SIP) – option to buy shares within the Society, where they will attract interest and £10 worth of matching shares.
  • Cycle to Work scheme – Option to purchase your bicycle and accessories through salary sacrifice
  • Holiday buy- colleagues can buy up to a week extra of annual leave each year
• Company Pension- you can access a company pension scheme with us as well as access to Pension wellbeing information.
• Nous – smart assistant that can save you money and time on managing your household bills.

To find out more about all of these plus many more reasons to join us, please visit Rewards and benefits - Central Coop (careers.coop)

Who are we?

OurCoop is the UK’s largest independent co-operative Society, with more than one million Members and 13,000 colleagues operating in communities nationwide. It was formed by bringing together Central Co-op, The Midcounties Co-operative and Chelmsford Star Co-op to create a stronger, member-owned organisation rooted in shared co-operative values.

The Society trades nationally through its family of businesses while remaining deeply rooted in local communities. Its footprint spans Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Bedfordshire in the South and West; the Midlands including Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Northamptonshire; the North including Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire; and the East of England, including Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk.

OurCoop and its family of businesses are trading names of Central England Co-operative Limited.