London: Source

Bristol: Source

Amsterdam: Source

About the job

👋🏻 Hello, we’re Laka

You might not have heard of us yet – that’s OK, you’ve found us now – come and find out more about our journey…

Founded in 2017, Laka set out to transform insurance by connecting passionate cyclists to form a collective and protect their bikes for when things go wrong – a better model for insurance was born. For once people come first in insurance by fairly sharing the cost amongst each other. We exist to rewrite the rules of insurance so it’s something people stand with, not against.

Our model: Laka makes sure everything runs smoothly for The Collective – from exceptionally fast claims, splitting the cost fairly, guaranteeing a maximum price and all the other heavy lifting of a regulated insurance business. For that service, the collective pays Laka a fee relative to the claims in a month.

Take a closer look at exactly what this means and how it works at laka.co

What have we been up to since then…?

In a nutshell, we’ve been very busy! Here are a few of the massive achievements we’ve had:

🚀 Raised an awesome Series A investment round of over $20m

🚀 Grown the team to over 60 Lakanauts, based across the UK, NL & FR, enabling a choice-based, remote-first way of working

🚀 Launched Laka in multiple countries, essentially helping more people in more places!

🚀 Captured the UK and NL enthusiast cyclist market and expanded into commercial business partnering

🚀 Been awarded ‘Best Cycle Insurance Provider’ (for the past 5 years in a row – go us! 🥳)

🚀 Opened 3 shiny new offices in London, Bristol & Amsterdam to provide spaces for people to collaborate as they like

🚀 We’ve also achieved a 5* rating on Google Reviews – go check us out!

Help us continue to change an outdated industry…

We’re growing real fast on our path to make the Laka collective model the industry standard and we’re expanding across segments, products, and territories. We’re looking for innovative, bold and brave minds to help us build the world’s best insurance company.

🤘🏼 The role

Finance at Laka

The mission of the VP Finance is to act as a thought partner to the CEO and leadership group as the business scales. In addition to taking ownership of our Finance function, you will ensure the company understands the core economic drivers of the business and how our actions influence them.

You will be a trusted advisor and collaborator – guiding and empowering Laka’s decision-making. You will operate as a facilitator and conduit to our external investors, ensuring the company is optimising its full resources on the journey towards profitability and creating long-term value. The focus of this role will be towards FP&A rather than financial contol.

You will be a key member of the leadership group. This is a hybrid role – with a mixture of hands-on delivery and also strategic thinking, critical to achieving the company’s growth plans.

What you’ll be getting up to:

• Strategy: act as a thought partner to the CEO and leadership group on how we can drive better company financial performance. Create and execute the company’s financial strategy such as financial projections, budgeting, margins, and metrics strategy
• Business partner: partner effectively with internal teams on finance and strategy topics, ensuring that teams understand their budgets and financial performance indicators
• Growth planning: collaborate with the CEO and Head of Finance on business growth strategies. Use data analysis to inform business strategy, financial models, and how Laka can scale our global finance & revenue infrastructure
• Effectively interface, build relationships, and collaborate with key investors and the Board. You’ll be able to educate and clearly communicate Laka’s story to external stakeholders
• Process development: support the Head of Finance and Finance Manager to optimise the finance function across our existing entities (UK, NL and FR), including cash flow planning, financial closes, and AP/AR processes
• Governance: ensure correct financial governance, control, and legal processes are in place in partnership with our Insurance team
• Own the route towards profitability – managing runway and burn rate
• Capture, analyse, and deliver financial data and insights that maximise the C Team, leadership group and board’s strategic decision-making
• Collaborate with the C Team on fundraising activities, including leading on due diligence and pitch materials
• Overall accountability for all Finance team activities, including payroll, account receivables, expense processing, taxes, and revenue recognition
  

Location: as a business we’re remote-first, but we’d love for this role to come into our offices on a semi-regular basis (London, Bristol & Amsterdam)

Requirements

👉🏻 This role will be a great fit if you:

Have:

• worked in a similar role either as a VP/Finance Director (or experience Head of), ideally at a Series A-C scale up, in a D2C or B2B2C business
• experience working in a regulated environment (FinTech / InsurTech desired)
• experience of mergers & acquisitions, particularly on post-acquisition integration and value creation
• experience of building a strong Finance capability within a dynamic, complex and rapidly evolving VC backed businesses
• experience of managing cash-flow and runway in a fast scaling business where growth and control are both key
• a solid understanding of accounting and business data analytics, with a strategic and commercial mindset
• a strong understanding of equity and debt financing to support our fundraising activities, with the ability to creatively develop and implement innovative solutions for capital structure with budgeting limitations
  

Can:

• manage financial resources, analyse the market, and build financial models to guide the company’s growth
• build financial models and detailed presentations for stakeholders and potential investors
• thrive within a lean team, with a ‘hands-dirty’ mindset
• communicate, collaborate and lead effectively
• problem solve, taking others with you in your decision making
  

Before you apply, please make sure that you currently have the right to work in the UK (we’re really sorry, but we’re not able to provide visa sponsorship for this role).

Benefits

🌟 Our perks

What can you expect from working at Laka?

🏠 Remote-first way of working – you choose whether you work from home or our beautiful offices in Amsterdam, London & Bristol (we have no minimum expectation of how many days you come in, although we’d love to see your friendly face!)

📈 Share options – we want you to be rewarded for Laka’s success – everyone in the business is granted share options when they join

🌴 Annual leave – 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays), plus an additional 3 days at Christmas, with the option to roll over up to 5 days per year

💶 Pension scheme – Laka pays 3% of your base salary into your pension to help you save for the future

💊 Private medical insurance – we’ll give you individual private cover, with the option to add partners & dependants too (at a small cost)

🖥 Home set-up allowance – in addition to letting you choose the kit you want (MacBook or Windows laptop, plus additional equipment like screens, keyboard, etc), we’ll also give you a one-off budget of €220 to get anything else you want in order to make your homeworking environment a comfortable place to be

🍽 Weekly lunch on us – €15 every Wednesday to enjoy lunch on Laka – pop out locally with people in the office, or order-in at home, the choice is yours

💃 Company-wide events – we love getting everyone together as much as possible – expect regular events throughout the year, for team building, bonding, and general good old-fashioned fun!

🎳 Monthly socials – as if quarterly company events weren’t enough, we also give each office a budget for a monthly social activity (think anything from low-key dinner & drinks through to adventure golf, paddleboarding, bowling, electric darts, trampoline parks and more!)

👚 Laka swag – we’ll give you some lovely Laka kit to get you started, including a jumper & t-shirt so you can feel (& look) like part of the family

🚴 Laka credit – for all you cyclists, we’ll give you €10 credit per month towards insuring your bike(s) with us – plus give you access to a bunch of cycling industry discounts

🧠 Mental health support – unlimited support via Spill, including one-to-one therapy sessions

🌈 Belonging at Laka

We’re committed to building and sustaining a business that promotes diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging – our customer collective is broad and inclusive, and we’d like our own people to be too. We’re fast becoming a global community of people and we believe each person’s unique qualities should be celebrated as they are a huge part of what makes Laka a great place to be. We’d love you to bring your authentic self to work every single day, no matter your age, ethnicity, religion, citizenship, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, caring responsibilities, neurodiversity, or anything else that makes you, you. If you’d like to request a reasonable adjustment as part of our application or assessment process, please let us know by emailing support@laka.co.uk.