Team Member Spotlight - Richard Holden from the Finance Department
PREM Team Member Spotlight is a quick introduction to a member of our staff from any one of our departments. We hope this will allow you to put a face to a name and give you an insight into what we do here on a day-to-day basis.
Name: Richard Holden
Job title: Group Financial Controller – Ireland & UK
What area of PREM Group do you work in? Finance department - Head Office Dublin
Describe your role in one word: Calmness
How did you get to where you are now? I joined PREM Group in 2013 on a 6 month contract and stayed (if HR find out that I am still here four years later, I could be in trouble). I had 9 years hotel experience when I joined PREM, though I worked for RSA Insurance plc in the UK for 11 years prior to that.
What do you work on, on a daily basis? The cycles with my role are more weekly (looking at sales & payroll), monthly (monthly accounts filing and review) and annual (Budget Cycle in Q4 and Audit in Q1). From one day to the next, I could be anywhere in Ireland or the UK, from Mayo to Manchester or Rochestown to Reading (and they say accountancy is dull!)
What’s been your proudest moment since working here?
About this time last year, I gave a financial presentation to our UK General Managers and Management team which was described by Jim Murphy, our MD, as refreshing, clear and precise. This is very heady praise for an accountant to receive!
I’m occasionally allowed out to meet the public. I have actually signed up a number of clients, some of whom have become trusted partners and repeat customers.
What’s the most enjoyable thing about your job?
The variety. Each day brings new and unexpected challenges and the team in PREM is ideally equipped to rise to these challenges, as our shared entrepreneurial spirit focuses on creating the possible.
Describe your work/life balance at PREM Group
I was a husband and a father before I joined and this is respected and understood by the PREM family. Finance has significant peaks in our workload and this is recognised but never exploited.
An interesting fact/something no one else knows about you?
I used to be a keen hurler and I have the scars to prove it.
I took up the saxophone when I turned 40 (and it is best that no one else knows this from experience)
A barber once described my hair as thick.
I’m a gentleman like my father, so I can play the accordion but don’t