Andrew Alicastro MBA

Lead comprehensive financial analysis to develop insights for meaningful decision-making to senior leadership with preparation of reports to the Board of Directors and Executive Management Committee. Risk Management Group – Facilitate development of forecasts and expense budgets for the Risk Management Group. Delivered multiple cost-avoidance options and cost-savings solutions that led to attaining the budget goal. Target Operating Model – Key contributor for the Risk Group’s target operating model in North America with a reduction of total direct expenses of $3.8M or 6.5% within one year. Financial Dashboard – Spearheaded development of a “first-of-its-kind” financial dashboard used for cross-entity reporting. This new dashboard replaced antiquated Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations while significantly enhancing transparency across all entities.

Selected to a lead role to provide financial analysis that supported the bank’s financial planning and capital budgeting process, and its business unit profitability. Budget Analysis – Efficiently managed budget analysis that led to a 30% savings in budgeted costs with use of external contract hires as required. Financial & Staffing Models – Piloted the build of financial and staffing models that significantly increased the Bank’s Compliance department from 20 to 400+ employees and improved long-term strategy planning. Staff Leadership – Managed and trained Junior Analysts on month-end accounting close while ensuring that all accounting entries were accurate – leading to greatly improved accuracy of monthly forecasts. Succeeded in reducing analysis time by two business days and improved accuracy by 35%.

Managed the financial planning and analysis operations team with ownership of the production of monthly unit profitability reports. Financial Reporting – Succeeded in improving accuracy of monthly financial actuals with automated monthly financial reports. P&L Reports – Generated P&L reports, identified expense savings and negotiated new service contracts that reduced operating expenses by 20%.

Provided financial and corporate accounting consulting services to small businesses with advisory services related to key metrics to ensure accuracy of monthly results and identification of other savings opportunities for clients. Financial Reporting – Developed and delivered monthly financial reports for clients, provided monthly journal entries, reconciliations, and general ledger adjustments to ensure accuracy and completeness of monthly results. Customer Successes – Identified $15,000 in missing invoices with thorough analysis of monthly variances to budget and made appropriate recommendations for remedy of situation. Tracked sales and customer trends, generated variance reports, examined P&L statements to determine areas of opportunity to streamline expenses that realized 50% streamlining of costs.

Provided consultative support for the global consulting group using accounting software to analyze impact of accounting changes, risk mitigation, revenue targets and other requirements for customers. Project Support – Assisted consulting partners in providing data related to revenue and billing, regulatory compliance, and GAAP. Provided updates to the Project Accounting Manager related to revenues and other project requirements.

Managed creation of complex forecasting models to track various projects and led extensive case reviews and introduction of improvement protocols in examining and filtering fraudulent transactions. Claims Processing – Streamlined the claims processing procedures with establishment of timelines for each phase that reduced average claims reporting time by 25% or from 12 to 8 months. Fraudulent Claims – Slashed $500K in fraudulent claim costs with introduction of a unique process checklist that enabled senior management to review and identify duplicate claims submissions by name, tax identification, and account number.

MBA with concentration in finance and accounting