Senior Associate, Travel & Expense

Position Summary

The Travel and Expense Senior Associate is responsible for managing General Atlantic’s travel program and expense reimbursement process for over 400 employees globally.  The role requires setting the strategic direction for travel, identifying and managing key partners, enforcing policy compliance, managing duty of care, and driving the expense reimbursement process.  Day-to-day responsibilities include ensuring a safe and positive travel experience for our employees, the maintenance and enforcement of the Company’s global travel policy and guidelines, expense report approval and auditing, allocations, and monthly reporting and analysis of T&E spend for senior management.  The candidate will also own relationships with credit card providers, travel agencies, airlines and travel industry advisors and will also interact with auditors and regulatory agencies as required. 

Responsibilities 

• Manage the firm’s travel program by working with our employees, executives, and Travel Management Company to support travel through expense reimbursement while maintaining operational excellence
• Drive strategy, day-to-day operations, and policies for travel, expense reimbursement, and corporate cards. Manage T&E system and other related platforms to drive effective processes and enhancements.
• Serve as a Travel SME and a key escalation contact for internal stakeholders and preferred suppliers
• Maintain the Company’s travel and entertainment policy. Ensure periodic reviews and updates are executed through coordination with key stakeholders including the Company’s Finance and Human Resources teams.
• Manage relationship with all travel and entertainment service providers including credit card company, airlines, private aviation program managers, hotel chains, travel agencies and advisors to ensure proactive assessment of opportunities and effectively address potential challenges as they arise. This includes periodic assessment of rates to identify opportunities to reduce costs.
• Interact with employees to address ad-hoc questions/concerns around travel and entertainment policy and guidelines. Maintain T&E training documentation for employees. Deliver training periodically to new employees and to broader audiences as required.
• Enforce adherence to the Company’s travel and entertainment policy through frequent audits of employee expense reports.
• Monitor accuracy of T&E reporting, including spend categories, to ensure accurate reporting and allocation.
• Ensure duty of care for our travelers. Monitor and manage high risk travel situations.
• Develop and maintain monthly reporting package to provide visibility to senior management on spending behaviors across the Company’s segments.
• Manage off-shore team to drive effective approval and auditing processes of expense reports, including compliance with types of expenses allowed under the Company’s policy and classification of expenses across various categories (e.g. internal, deal related, etc.). Identify opportunities for process improvement.
• Prepare reports for monthly expenses to be allocated to key stakeholders including limited partners. Drive accuracy and review processes with internal and external audit periodically as well as regulators as required.
• Identify industry trends and recommend/implement process and technology changes to improve efficiencies

Qualifications 

• At least 5 years of experience in travel and expense reimbursement processes. Prior experience in financial services and/or private equity industry is preferred.
• Experience managing expense reporting system, Workday preferred.
• Experience dealing with investor allocations for T&E expense strongly preferred.
• Strong attention to detail.
• Proven accounting and financial capabilities.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience managing off-shore teams preferred.
• Willingness to lead analysts and execute job functions are required.
• Experience with Corporate Card Management, Amex preferred