Trainee Accountant

About Selina

At Selina Finance, our mission is to provide exceptional value with simple and flexible financial products. We’re achieving this by building a next-generation digital lender targeting homeowners across the UK. More than £2tn of equity value is locked up in UK homes, while homeowners still need to rely on high-interest-rate consumer loans, credit cards, or overdrafts. We believe this is unfair and unnecessary. We offer a financing product unlike anything else out there, one that is as flexible as a current account, as affordable as a mortgage, and as easy to apply for as a consumer loan.

We are building an incredible team and culture of high performance, development, reward and recognition, ready for the next phase of our adventure, and this is where you come in!

We have quite a few things to be proud of:

🌏 We have 19 different nationalities across our London + Manchester offices

🏆 Voted as ‘one of the fastest-growing businesses in the UK’ by Business Leader Growth 500 for 2025

🏆 Voted top 30 of ‘Tempos 100 best start-ups to work for 2023’

🦾 Disability Confident Committed employer

🏆 BCorp Certified

✏️ Rated highly in our employee survey on:

✔ Workplace Culture

✔ Work Life/Balance

✔ Employee Recognition

About the Role:

We’re looking for a Trainee Accountant to join our financial team here at Selina. Working alongside Oli, our Head of Finance and working closely with our VP of Strategic Finance Andreas, you will be joining a team with a clear mission. Selina is a fast-paced environment, and this role will certainly give you exposure and experience to many aspects of the finance function.  

We’re looking for a candidate who has a keen interest in being part of a growing FinTech start-up that is constantly evolving and improving. You’ll have a questioning mindset, a problem-solving attitude and love working as part of a team, but also thrive when working with freedom and responsibility.  

 As the Trainee Accountant, you’ll be taking ownership of the company's financial and funder reporting, working closely with Selina’s Head of Finance and FinOps team.

What you’ll be working on:

• Own the integrity of the company’s financial information, working closely with the FinOps Accountant to maintain an accurate and well-controlled general ledger

• Manage the month-end close process, ensuring timetables are adhered to, and key deliverables are completed accurately and on time

• Prepare and distribute key management information and reporting packs, providing clear insight into financial performance

• Own our Accounts Payable process, reviewing supplier terms, ensuring payment terms are adhered to and helping optimise our working capital requirements

• Manage the monthly payroll process, working closely with other departments to ensure the accurate processing of commissions, overtime, bonuses, joiners and leavers

• Support the Finance and Capital Markets teams in managing our ongoing requirements with external funding partners, including regular reporting, reconciliations and responding to funder information requests

• Take an active role in the management and ongoing development of our loan tapes, helping ensure loan-level data provided to funding partners is complete, accurate and delivered within agreed timelines

• Develop a strong understanding of our funding structures, loan portfolio and funder requirements, building exposure to the capital markets side of a growing FinTech lender

• Work closely with our Operations team to support the daily loan disbursement process and ensure transactions are accurately reflected across our financial and funding data

• Develop a detailed understanding of how our business operates and how this is reflected across our financial and loan-level data

• Assess and monitor data quality, investigating discrepancies and working with teams across the business to resolve issues at source

• Own the company’s budgeting process, ensuring budgets and forecasts are kept up to date and regularly reviewed against actual performance

• Reconcile transactions and data across our financial systems, identifying and correcting discrepancies

• Research, test and implement new financial tools, including AI and automation solutions, to improve the efficiency, accuracy and scalability of Finance and Capital Markets processes

• Identify repetitive or manual processes across the finance function and proactively explore opportunities to automate them, helping the team spend more time on analysis and decision-making

• Assist with the annual audit and R&D tax credit claim process

• Help develop and maintain clear internal documentation, controls and procedures across Finance and FinOps processes

• Establish strong relationships with stakeholders across Finance, Capital Markets, Operations and the wider business, representing the data and reporting needs of the finance function

About you

• Experience in a finance role with an understanding of finance operations

• Solid understanding of accounting and financial reporting

• You love problem-solving, improving processes with an action-driven approach

• Strong communication, interpersonal and presentation skills, both written and verbal

• Have a strong work ethic promoting empathy and accountability

• Strong Excel and analytical skills

Things that would be nice for you to have (please do not let any of these points prevent you from applying):

• Prior experience at a fast-paced start-up/scale-up

• Prior experience at a financial services company or a financial services team in practice

• Financial or accounting degree or part qualification (ACA / ACCA / CIMA)

• Experience with Xero, Salesforce and Spendesk

What we offer

• £40,000 gross salary

• 25 days' annual leave, plus bank holidays

• Additional 1 day off for every two years you are with us

• 30 days’ work-from-anywhere allowance

• Bi-annual Bonus (discretionary)

• Health Cash Plan

• Volunteering allowance

• Growth Shares

• Annual L&D budget

• Cycle to work scheme

• 3% pension contribution

• Monthly socials

• Free access to mental health support

• A choice of benefits that work for you, courtesy of our benefits platform, ‘Thanks Ben’

• Annual £60 cycle allowance for Santander cycles or Evans (via ‘Thanks Ben’)

• Workplace Nursery Benefit, allowing eligible nursery costs to be paid via salary sacrifice

Our Values

Our values underpin how we work together as a high-performing team, driving our growth and success.

✅ Take Ownership - We all act as owners. We make decisions in the best interest of the company. We pride ourselves on solving problems, not finding barriers. We have a bias for action; we move fast and we deliver.

🥇 Customer Obsessed - We put our customers at the heart of everything we do. We listen to their needs and work tirelessly to provide them with the best possible products and experiences.

🚀 Drive Change - We are pioneers in our industry. We are not afraid to challenge the status quo, and we constantly seek out new and better ways of doing things. We are agile and adaptable, and we embrace change as an opportunity for growth.

💪 Empower Our Team - We believe that collaboration and teamwork are the cornerstones of success, and we set up our team for great achievements.

We are an equal opportunities employer and are committed to ensuring that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or race, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements that cannot be shown to be justifiable.

We also welcome and encourage applications from traditionally underrepresented groups and provide feedback to all candidates we interview, even if that feedback suggests another candidate may be a better fit for the role.