Interview with Christian Wegener — Head of FP&A and Finance Business Partnering
Financial Planning and Analysis teams play a crucial role in setting an organisation’s strategic focus, and in enabling leaders to execute on priorities and support their decision making process. Christian Wegener, N26’s Head of Financial Planning and Finance Business Partnering, tells us more about his team and his personal journey to building a bank the world loves to use.
What led you to your current role at N26?
After graduating in Business Management, I started my professional journey in consulting, after which I moved on to a finance role in the industry. Whilst doing consulting and project-work, I realised pretty quickly that I took more satisfaction from an operational leadership role, and taking responsibility to design but also deliver change, to manage towards objectives, and deliver continuous improvement and value. At Procter & Gamble I partnered with Marketing, Sales and Operations teams, did some M&A and project management, and led global and regional FP&A for some of the business units. From there, I moved on to Mastercard, where I led business planning for Europe, i.e. partnering with the corporate teams to prepare a regional spin for investor conferences, board meetings, and C-level reviews. Up until I joined N26 in September 2019, I had spent all of my career in big corporates and multinationals, some more some less structured. While some aspects of working in well-established corporations could be challenging, it presented an amazing professional “school” and allowed me to develop skills and competencies that are totally transferrable and relevant for my job at N26.
Why did you make the shift to a scale-up environment, and how is it like working at N26?
‘Building the bank the world loves to use’ was a vision that I found very inspirational and that attracted me to N26 from day 1; moreover, joining one of the highest valued FinTechs globally, preparing for an IPO in a few years from now, and being part of the journey to challenge the incumbents and transform an entire industry, was an amazing challenge and opportunity to also learn and grow professionally.
Furthermore, it was one of those rare and unique cases where you are tasked to build a team and all the planning and business partnering processes from scratch, i.e. to apply my past experience and skills from corporates in a completely different context.
It’s been a great choice to join N26 and I enjoy coming to work every day — no days are alike, the company is highly innovative and the organisation embraces change, it is led by a strong and inspirational leadership team, and it’s simply fun to work amongst such talented and committed people.
In your current role, how do you and your team contribute to the growth and success of N26?
I am heading the Global FP&A and Finance Business Partnering team at N26. We support the Founders and the C-Levels with the strategy process and the annual budgeting and forecasting; additionally, we provide insights and advice to the business teams on value creation, assess financial implications of different options, and manage business performance and risks. It’s up to us to translate the expectations of our Founders into targets for the entire company, and to cascade them to the functions and product lines. We partner with the business teams to shape their financial plans, to provide decision-making support, and hold the organisation accountable against objectives.
Can you share a bit about how the team is structured?
Today, we have organised the team around 3 overall pillars based in Europe and the US:
- Firstly, a small team of experienced FP&A professionals, whose role is to take the total company view and who directly support the founders. They orchestrate the overall financial planning and balance the total P/L (profit and loss statement) based on actuals and forecast; they risk-assess the plans, and they guide the organisation and the rest of the Finance team on the “What”, i.e. What do we need from each of the P/L areas to deliver on short- and mid-term objectives? What are the risks that need to be mitigated; what are the opportunities that could be re-invested to drive top- or bottom-line acceleration?
- Secondly, a team of Finance Business Partners (FBP) with a diverse skill set and background, who work directly with the C-Levels and their functional lead teams. The role of a Finance Business Partner is to provide financial leadership in a multi-functional context, and to become the trusted right hand of the business teams. I am looking at that team to have a compelling understanding of our business model and of the organisation, and to be drivers of (shareholder) value. This team is focused on the “How”, e.g. How do we deliver on the mid-term objectives? How do we take action in the short-term? How do we evolve the business model to address pockets of value in the market?
- The FBPs cover the entire P/L and value chain, so we have a team of FBPs focused on Growth, Operations and Core Banking; another important pillar of that team is Product Strategy, who work alongside the Product-organisation. Their focus is the innovation pipeline of the next 6–18 months, and business development in the broader sense through organic growth. Those FBPs are the business case powerhouse of the company and are deeply embedded into the multi-functional teams, who consist of Tech, Design, Product and Finance. One of their focus areas today is to enlarge our product portfolio and our ability to serve customer banking needs more broadly, in order to accelerate top- and bottom-line growth and sweeten margins.
Generally speaking there is great partnership and collaboration across the teams and also with the wider Finance organisation at N26.
What are you and your team focusing on for the next 12–24 months?
Our mid-term priorities are centered around supporting the C-Levels with the strategy development, and driving the plans to execution by setting the right measures and KPIs together with the business. We are at a pivotal point in the development of N26: the foundations are being laid to accelerate again growth next year through white-space and geographic expansion, and through share growth in the markets where we are already present, by completing our product portfolio and serving customer needs more holistically. Finance plays a key role in delivering on this plan.
On the organisation side we invest in building the team until 2021, and continue to put in place the tools, processes and capabilities to increase our value-add and impact on strategy and business performance. This will be the area of focus for the Finance Business Partners, whilst we aim to leverage more AI- and cloud-based planning software solutions in the FP&A context; we have high expectations that this can help us maintain simple and efficient processes, whilst the company grows in size, geographical footprint and complexity.
