The inaugural London FP&A Circle meeting took place less than two weeks following the UK vote for Brexit. In this dramatically transformed business environment the role of FP&A is more important than ever in helping to manage the value of the company. In undertaking this task, the analytical maturity of the company is very important.

The financial planning and analysis (FP&A Board) Board of senior practitioners recently met in London, UK, to discuss the pros and cons of rolling forecasts, how best to introduce it, and to hear a case study from Maersk Group about how the shipping, transport and oil firm has benefitted. “We’ve abolished the annual budget completely and only use rolling forecasting (RF) now,” said Matthijs Schot, head of performance & analysis at AP Moller Maersk, as he shared his company’s implementation four years ago of an RF process and the lessons they’ve learnt.

What are the basic ingredients of advanced FP&A analytics? Getting the discussion underway the Board’s founder and managing director, Larysa Melnychuk, suggested that it should be proactive, forward-looking, agile, available in real-time, multidimensional and integrated – although these elements are no more than the basic essentials. The combination should be enough to provide the business with good quality information that enables better business decision-making in a timely manner, while also providing unique insights that make a difference to that process.

The search for a “single version of the truth” and how to “make FP&A a trusted business advisory unit to the boardroom … like an internal dynamic Harvard/MIT unit” were among key trends identified by the London FP&A Board.

The financial planning and analysis (FP&A)  board met for the third time in London on 1 May at Hermes Fund Managers’ offices in the City of London. Marc Lloyd, the firm’s head of FP&A, again played host to Ash Sharma, head of FP&A at Alliance Boots Healthcare; Darren Craddock, director of planning and forecasting at insurer Aviva; and Frederik Reynaert, head of financial planning and reporting at travel firm Thomas Cook.

The inaugural full meeting of the London FP&A  Board confined itself to detailing the attributes required of an FP&A professional and the evening’s roundtable discussion produced a set of best practice recommendations detailing the necessary skills and mix of different personalities that should go into building a successful FP&A team.