Interview with Andrew Lynch, FP&A at Blue Light Card
Andrew shares the attraction of becoming a FP&A specialist, along with the future opportunities and evolutions to come in this area of finance.
Interview with Andrew Lynch, FP&A at Blue Light Card
Andrew shares the attraction of becoming a FP&A specialist, along with the future opportunities and evolutions to come in this area of finance.
Andrew Lynch is an accomplished senior finance professional with almost 15 years of experience in commercially focussed finance positions. He has an extensive track record of delivering high-quality, strategic advice to businesses ranging from PE-backed to global, listed organisations.
Andrew is a true champion of the FP&A function, and we were delighted when he contributed to our series of articles focusing on this aspect of finance. Andrew shares with you the attraction of becoming a FP&A specialist, along with the future opportunities and evolutions to come in this area of finance.
Tell us about your current role
I’m currently Head of FP&A for Blue Light Card, the discount card provider for people who work in emergency services, NHS, social care, armed forces and, recently added, teachers.
I oversee the FP&A team, and the Insight and Analytics team. We’re responsible for all of the budgeting and target setting, modelling and forecasting, KPI and financial reporting, as well as providing whatever insight and analysis the business needs to achieve their objectives.
I sit on our senior leadership team, and report into our CFO, Vicky Norrish. I joined the business in November 2023 as the first hire into the newly created FP&A team, with a remit to build out that function over time, and took on the management of the Insight and Analytics team shortly thereafter.
Given that it was a brand new function in a fast-growing business like ours, the role has changed a lot in those 9 months! In the early days I was very hands-on, building out forecast models, reporting packs, pulling data and doing analysis all myself, while also trying to recruit a team. Since the team has expanded, I’ve been able to move into more of a manager role, and spend more time leading, coaching, and maintaining relationships with our senior leaders and Exec team.
The key objectives for us are the fundamental objectives of any FP&A team: support the business to achieve its objectives through reporting, forecasting, analysis and consulting, underpinned by great people, and the right data and tools. We’ve done a lot of work to build out our reporting and forecasting capability over the last 9 months, and in particular we’re now turning our attention to data and tools, making sure that as the business and the FP&A team grows, we’ve got the software we need to do the job effectively (yes, we need more than just Excel!), and that the quality and consistency of data is where we need it to be.
What attracted you to become an FP&A specialist?
I came into FP&A quite organically. I graduated from university with an economics degree and joined a finance graduate scheme at a large insurance company – and as part of that scheme, the company funded a professional qualification. They gave us the option to choose between CIMA or an insurance-specific qualification (ACII), and given that I was in Finance, I just chose CIMA. It was only 2-3 years later that I realised the professional rivalry between people with different accounting qualifications! I love finance, numbers, Excel and anything data-related, and I’ve learned some SQL, Power BI and Python along the way – but I’m CIMA qualified rather than ACCA and I don’t have any experience in a Big 4 audit company, so FP&A is a much more natural fit for me than accounting, tax, audit or any other specialism within the Finance function.
And while I’m Head of FP&A at a slightly larger company now, in my prior role I was Finance Director of a smaller family-owned business here in Nottingham. In future I’d love to either stay in the Finance function as FD or CFO, or potentially spread my wings into a more commercial role like Head of Commercial Finance, COO, Chief Commercial Officer, or even a CEO role one day. That’s the thing I love about FP&A in particular – it’s a hugely useful, very commercially focused role where you get to see the whole P&L, the whole business, and how everything fits together to create a great business, so it gives you an excellent platform to move outside of Finance if you have that ambition.
That commercial focus, and the ability to work with (non-financial) data is the big difference between FP&A and more traditional accounting roles. In all honesty, if you asked me to describe the differences between IFRS and US GAAP, or to do a corporation tax calculation, or prepare a consolidated P&L and balance sheet, I’d give it a good go, but there are people who are way better than me at those things – and like them a lot more than I do! In contrast, FP&A professionals spend their time partnering with stakeholders, defining the reporting, analysis, modelling or insight they need, and figuring out how to create it. It’s such a fun role.
What are the future opportunities and evolutions to come in FP&A?
The huge change over the next 5-10 years will be all about data and AI. The day-to-day life of an FP&A Analyst will be fundamentally different ten years from now.
Firstly, all the modelling, forecasting, or analysis you do is ultimately limited by the quantity, quality and granularity of data you can get to. In FP&A, the more comfortable you are with data, the better you will be at job. Every FP&A professional should look at learning SQL, because it unlocks so much opportunity for getting under the hood of what data your business collects. Even with tools like Datarails, Aleph, Planful, Vena, or other FP&A tools, understanding where your business data comes from, how it gets into the stage it gets to, and then how you can use that data to generate insight, or create better, more robust forecasts, is a crucial skill.
The other change is generative AI – which almost feels cliché to say at this point in time (August 2024), but it’s going to fundamentally change the work of an FP&A pro. The days of finding data, pulling it into Excel, creating a line graph, then pasting it into PowerPoint will soon be consigned to history. As an example, I regularly use ChatGPT to create far more advanced SQL than I could do on my own. That directly impacts the quality of the forecasts I can create, or the level of insight I can provide to stakeholders – and that’s available today. All the FP&A tools I mentioned above are racing to figure out how to integrate AI into their products as well. So 12-24 months from now, you’ll just write something like “show me a bar chart of marketing spend by month compared to budget over the last 8 months” and you’ll have it, immediately.
Then, the work becomes about a) working with the data and the AI to make sure you’re getting results and analysis that make sense, and b) becoming a great business partner so that your analysis is hitting the mark for your stakeholders, and really adding value.
What would be your advice to anyone considering a career in FP&A?
Do it! It’s a wonderful career – if you’re curious, analytical, data-driven, can think commercially, and you love talking to people, there’s no better job in the world. I love it.
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Our FP&A Article Series
An Introduction to our FP&A Articles
