Maternity Cover Across the Finance Function: MA to FC

Maternity cover is one of the few hiring decisions with a known start date, a known duration and a known end — and businesses still get it wrong with some regularity. The mistake is almost never the candidate; it is choosing the wrong arrangement for the level. A fixed-term contract that works perfectly for a Management Accountant will produce a thin shortlist at Financial Controller level, because the people who cover FC roles are career interims who will not take employment. This guide sets out how the decision changes as you move up the function, what each arrangement costs, and how to run the cover so the returner comes back to something recognisable.

The principle: the arrangement follows the level

The single most useful thing to understand is that the candidate market changes shape as you move up the function, and the right arrangement follows it.

At Management Accountant and Finance Manager level, a genuine pool of capable people will accept a nine-to-twelve month fixed-term contract — people between roles, people who want a defined commitment, people returning from a career break. Employment status brings benefits and stability they value, and you pay less than a day rate.

At Financial Controller level and above, that pool thins sharply. The people who are good at stepping into a business for nine months and running it have built careers doing exactly that, they work through their own companies, and they will generally decline an FTC. Offering one at that level narrows your shortlist to people between permanent roles — which is a different and usually weaker group for this purpose.

That single distinction resolves most maternity cover decisions. Everything below is detail.

Level by level

Management Accountant. FTC is almost always right. The work is defined, the cycle is monthly, and the pool for a twelve-month contract is deep. Budget roughly the salary equivalent plus employment costs. Verify qualification with CIMA, ACCA or ICAEW as standard. Recruit early — the handover matters more here than people expect, because month-end knowledge is procedural and lives in habits rather than documents. See Management Accountant recruitment.

Finance Manager. FTC usually right, interim where the role also needs something fixed. This is the level where the choice genuinely goes both ways: if the cover is pure continuity, take the contract; if the function is mid-systems-change or the close is unreliable, an interim brings pattern recognition that a contractor learning the business does not. Our guide to interim Finance Manager cover works through the distinction.

Financial Accountant. Depends entirely on timing. If the leave spans a year-end, you need someone who has run statutory accounts and an audit unsupervised — that is an interim market. If it falls between cycles, an FTC is fine.

FP&A Manager. Timing again: cover spanning the budget season needs someone who can own a planning cycle from a standing start, which points to interim. Outside it, FTC works. See interim FP&A and budget season.

Financial Controller. Interim, in nearly all cases. The role carries the close, the balance sheet, the audit relationship and the team, and it needs someone effective within a fortnight. This is the level where FTC offers most often produce disappointing shortlists.

Head of Finance or Finance Director. Interim, without qualification. At this level the cover also carries the bank, the board and the commercial challenge, and the market is entirely a day-rate one — see interim Finance Director.

What each costs

Two points on the arithmetic. The FTC figures include employer’s National Insurance, pension and benefits — roughly 20% above salary — which is the honest number to compare against a day rate. And an interim covering nine months at 195 working days costs more in total than an FTC at the same level; you are buying speed, flexibility and a clean ending. Rates across the function are in our interim finance rate card.

Timing: start earlier than feels necessary

The most common practical failure is starting too late. A useful sequence:

Four to five months before the leave: decide the arrangement and brief the search. At FC level and above, good interims plan their year and the best are booked.

Three months before: appoint. FTC candidates frequently have notice periods of their own, which is the factor businesses most often forget when comparing arrangements.

Four to six weeks before: start, with overlap. This is the single highest-return decision in the whole exercise — two to four weeks of handover with the person going on leave transforms the first month, and businesses that skip it lose more than the overlap costs.

And plan the return, including a handover back and a conversation about what has changed. Returners who come back to a function they no longer recognise are the ones most likely to leave within six months.

Running the cover well

Define what the cover is for. “Keep things going” produces a caretaker, which may be exactly right — but if the leave is also an opportunity to fix the close or document the process, say so and price accordingly. Being explicit avoids the returner discovering unannounced change.

Give real authority. Cover without decision rights slows everything and frustrates everyone. Sign-off limits, system access and the ability to direct the team should transfer on day one.

Document as you go. Maternity cover is one of the few moments when a business is forced to write down how its finance function actually works. Treating that as a deliverable rather than a by-product leaves the function better than it found it.

And keep the returner informed at whatever level they want. Legally the arrangements around leave and return are set out on gov.uk, with practical guidance from Acas; culturally, the businesses that handle this well are the ones where the returner is not surprised by anything.

When cover becomes something else

Two situations worth naming. The returner does not return. It happens, and a business that has run a good cover arrangement frequently has an obvious permanent candidate already in the seat — which is one of the quiet advantages of choosing well at the start. And the cover reveals the role was wrong. Nine months of an experienced interim sometimes shows that the function needed a Financial Controller rather than a Finance Manager, or that two roles should be one. That is useful information, and it is worth acting on rather than defaulting back to the previous structure — our guide to structuring a finance team covers the question.