Director of Expense Accounting

Director Of Expense Accounting

The Director of Expense Accounting will support the Head of Expense Accounting and Allocation Modeling while leading key accounting operations that drive the accuracy and integrity of Mass Mutual's financial reporting. In this highly visible leadership role, you'll oversee the expense accounting team, ensuring a timely and accurate month-end close, a strong control environment, and compliance with U.S. GAAP and Statutory (NAIC/SSAP) requirements.

You'll partner closely with Finance, FP&A, Procurement, Accounts Payable, Tax, Treasury, and Controllership teams to deliver accurate financial results, strengthen governance processes, and support strategic business initiatives. This is an exciting opportunity to influence critical accounting processes, lead a talented team, and help drive continuous improvement across the organization.

As a leader on our accounting team, you will oversee core expense accounting operations, ensuring accurate financial reporting, strong internal controls, and continuous process improvement. You will lead a blended onshore/offshore team, helping to assess risk, understand all their outputs, and lead tailored training to maintain/enhance professional standards and judgement.

Month-End Close Leadership

• Lead the monthly expense close process, including calendars, communications, deliverables, dependencies, and deadlines.
• Review and approve journal entries related to accruals, prepaids, allocations, reclassifications, and corrections.
• Analyze expense trends and variances, to appreciate expense norms and what can trigger deviations from those norms.
• Oversee close checklists, account reconciliations, and subledger-to-general ledger tie-outs.
• Collaborate with Accounts Payable, Procurement, Payroll, Treasury, and other partners to identify and address risks impacting the close process.

Accounting Controls & Governance

• Maintain a strong internal control environment supporting expense accounting processes.
• Ensure appropriate segregation of duties, access controls, and approval workflows.
• Partner with internal and external auditors on walkthroughs, testing, and audit requests.
• Lead control self-assessments and process risk reviews, implementing improvements that enhance efficiency and accuracy.
• Drive compliance with documentation and evidence retention requirements.

Subsidiary & Legal Entity Expense Accounting

• Oversee expense accounting activities across subsidiaries and legal entities, including intercompany transactions and settlements.
• Ensure compliance with legal entity requirements, reporting structures, and accounting policies.
• Support cross-entity reconciliations and statutory reporting activities.
• Partner with subsidiary stakeholders to ensure accurate expense classification and reporting.

Fixed Assets & Capitalization

• Oversee Fixed Asset Accounting to ensure proper capitalization treatment.
• Support accounting activities related to depreciation, asset retirements, impairments, and construction-in-progress transfers.
• Review and approve expense reclassifications associated with capital projects and internally developed software.
• Maintain reconciliations and supporting schedules for capital project-related accounts.

Lease Accounting

• Oversee Lease Accounting activities and related expense recognition.
• Partner with lease administration and controllership teams to ensure complete and accurate lease populations.
• Review reconciliations of lease-related accounts, including audit adjustments and foreign exchange impacts where applicable.
• Review supporting documentation for disclosures and financial statement reporting.

Leadership & Team Development

• Lead and develop a blended onshore/offshore accounting team.
• Establish and maintain standard operating procedures and process documentation.
• Coach, mentor, and develop team members while fostering a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
• Drive automation and operational efficiencies utilizing tools such as Excel, Power Query, Power BI, Alteryx, SQL, and workflow automation solutions.
• Lead the migration of team from SAP R3 to SAP S4, while preparing for wave 2 migration of AP, FA and Lease systems

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Economics or Business Administration or a Master's Degree in Accounting.
• 8+ years of progressive accounting experience in public accounting and/or a large, complex corporate environment.
• 2+ years of experience as a people leader, responsible for managing direct reports OR 5+ years demonstrating informal leadership by guiding, coaching, and supporting colleagues in their day-to-day work

Preferred Qualifications

• CPA, MSA, or MBA preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive accounting experience, including expense accounting and month-end close leadership.
• Prior people leadership experience.
• Strong knowledge of U.S. GAAP; experience with Statutory (NAIC/SSAP) accounting within the insurance industry is highly desirable.
• Experience with lease accounting (ASC 842) and fixed asset accounting.
• Knowledge of…