Finance Controls Reporting Associate

About this role BlackRock is one of the world’s preeminent asset management firms and a premier provider of global investment management, risk management and advisory services to institutional, intermediary and individual investors around the world.  BlackRock offers a range of solutions — from rigorous fundamental and quantitative active management approaches aimed at maximizing outperformance to highly efficient indexing strategies designed to gain broad exposure to the world’s capital markets.  Our clients can access our investment solutions through a variety of product structures, including individual and institutional separate accounts, mutual funds and other pooled investment vehicles, and the industry-leading iShares® ETFs. Business Unit Overview: The Financial Controls Reporting team (FCR) is responsible for establishing and performing independent testing over BlackRock’s financial risk and control framework and performs the independent testing of said framework. The largest element of this work is to satisfy BlackRock’s Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) §404 requirements.  FCR engages with various teams across the firm to understand the design of their internal controls and then conduct assessments on the aforementioned design effectiveness as well as the operating effectiveness of their internal controls (including fraud risk controls) and financial reporting procedures. Financial controls testing is also done to satisfy a number of other legislative and governance requirements at the regional and subsidiary level. This is a growth area for the team that that introduces them to additional stakeholders from across the firm. In addition, FCR supports Finance with the risk management of key projects and strategic initiatives.  FCR coordinates with other risk and control functions across BlackRock to provide effective enterprise-wide risk management. Job Purpose/Background: The successful candidate will help deliver the broad suite of financial controls testing, which will include evaluating, testing and reviewing internal controls.  To do this, the individual will actively work with colleagues across a multitude of functions (e.g., Finance, Human Resources (HR), Technology, Operations) and coordinate with various control disciplines (e.g., Service Organization Reporting, Internal Audit, Enterprise Risk Management). The role will require the individual to think and act strategically as the team continuously responds and adapts to a dynamic corporate environment. A successful candidate in this role will possess a deep understanding of core financial processes as well as the products and services offered by a large investment manager. Key Responsibilities: Evaluating key risks in financial reporting processes, effectively articulating risk issues to various stakeholders and proposing changes in control design to address risks efficiently Providing advice to the business (including Finance, HR, Technology and Operations, among others) throughout the SOX process to continually enhance internal controls and create an efficient and effective SOX compliance process (and improve the firm’s internal controls over financial reporting) Understanding external audit requirements to provide appropriate internal control and management testing documentation that meets those needs Demonstrating knowledge of accounting principles, key SOX guidance and emerging topics for discussion with the team, external auditors and peers regarding the impact to the existing SOX framework Coordinating and collaborating with other risk and control functions to evaluate the impact of their work on the SOX compliance program and coordinate efforts with them Participating in ad-hoc projects and providing expertise and insights from a risk and controls perspective Development Value: This is an exciting opportunity for an individual who wants to growth their finance and controls skill set. It provides exposure to a wide range of products and teams, allow ... (truncated, view full listing at source)