Completed final examinations of Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) in 1981. Associate member of CIMA from 1992 to 1995.

Installed a mid-sized banking package at 3 banks in South Africa, Hong Kong and Indonesia. Parameterised chart of accounts setup for complete integrated ledger. Forex, swap and money market trading and analysis/reporting of position and treasury. Retail account setup - current and savings accounts. Summary reporting (multi-branch and divisions) to final balance sheet and income statement level. In all cases, bridged IT and business departments, working closely with dedicated project teams of 5-10 people. Number of users affected: from a few hundred to several thousand.

Life insurance and investments: Supported operational departments (client services, underwriting, claims) and Finance functions (accounts, actuarial). Good understanding of retail investments via unit-linked funds and simple portfolio management. Lots of experience with external data feeds (asset pricing and exchange rates) and automated payment collection via various terminal-based or Internet-based bank account and card systems. Good understanding of all regulatory authorities and their requirements.

Specified finance system requirements and evaluated vendor proposals. Installed generic finance packages (GL = General Ledger, A/R = Accounts Receivable / Debtors, A/P = Accounts Payable / Creditors) at several companies. Chart of accounts setup. Sophisticated reporting via built-in and external reporting systems. Revision of user procedures, including cutover from older systems.

Expert at integration of non-Finance and Finance systems. Good understanding of migrations, risks, controls and auditability. Technical IT knowledge more than good enough to go 'under the covers' where appropriate. Always helped IT to understand Finance thinking and vice versa. Implemented system architecture to give Finance users (50-100) the ability to 'do their Finance thing' knowing the validity and scope of dedicated data sources. Comfortable with multi-gigabyte Finance databases with 500 million records plus, integration with common tools like Microsoft Excel and Access, other dedicated financial reporting tools, archiving of data for historic financial periods etc.

Run Sage accounting system for own small charity and private companies.