Chief Risk Officer at ABSA Bank

Chief Risk Officer at ABSA Bank

Bring your possibility to life! Define your career with us

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

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Job Summary

• A senior role as a member of the Country Management Committee, the jobholder leads oversight of the risk function and actively participates in defining strategic objectives to support the business; business planning and setting the direction of the business in line with Group strategy.
• Risk representative on Country Management Committee (CMC) and other Committees.
• Chair of Horizontal Review Forum or similar, and member of the Risk Controls Committee and the Country Watch list & Impaired Debt Committee ensuring robust oversight, reporting and effective management and control of principal risks.
• To drive meaningful change initiatives supporting the One Risk and One Africa strategy, ensuring effective communication and management of key stakeholders.
• Working to ensure that the country strategic objectives are delivered within the risk appetite framework set by the Absa Africa – Executive and Group Risk.
• Accountable for ensuring the right people, processes, policies, systems are in place to achieve cost effective and efficient risk management within the country that is aligned to strategic objectives and Group Risk Target Operating Model.

Job Description

Main accountabilities and approximate time split

Risk Management – 60%

Oversight responsibility for personal & team adherence to governance, compliance, and control framework. Ensuring conformance to policy and procedures. Oversight responsibility of credit, market, operational and fraud risk and reporting thereof. Ensuring risk control framework is embedded in business and robustly managed/monitored. Drive an environment of added value where everything is done to add value to every proposition and in everything, the teams do.

Team Leadership and People Development – 15%

Develop highly motivated teams of Risk Heads, maintaining excellent relationships within leadership teams and across the wider Africa – Risk team to ensure achievement of business goals. Create a high-performance environment in which all employees are engaged as measured by the EOS. Oversight of reward/recognition decisions for the Risk team. Drive the risk-training plan across the Risk function to ensure the training and development needs are actively managed. Set challenging objectives and ensure effective performance development and succession planning for the team. Drive the development of risk specialization to build in-house expertise that can be efficiently transferred across Africa – if required.

Business Risk Partnership -15%

Ensure the business unit delivers a service which is truly adding value and is seen as key to the Business delivering against stretching targets by becoming a trusted advisor. Responsible for delivering consistent and timely risk decisions. Drive communication and formal feedback process between Risk and the Business to build trust, partnership, and appreciation of risk management function amongst the business partners.

Business and Change Management – 10%

Initiate and proactively embed agreed change initiatives in support of One Risk and One Africa strategic objectives, driving process & quality improvements, cost reductions and development of risk professionals. Promote a culture of continuous improvement and driving necessary changes. Deliver organizational costs within the agreed budget. Drive the continual need for greater efficiency. Ensure capacity to manage volume workflow to world-class standards of quality and cost.

Develop and maintain strong network of internal contacts at a senior level.

Technical Skills/Competencies

Skills:

Strong intellect balanced by practical and pragmatic approach. Decisive. Strong internal and external networking. Analytical. Risk Management. People management and coaching. Communications (written and oral) and presentations. Excellent negotiation and influencing.

Critical Competencies:

Commercial/ entrepreneurial. Relationship/ partnership approach. Customer/ market perspective. Technical skills and knowledge. Problem solving/ decision making.

Experience, qualifications, and other requirements specific to the role

Experience:

Proven track record in the successful delivery of risk management. Exercising judgement for complex risk oversight decisions. Managing risk and reward.

Risk and Controls Objectives

Ensure that all activities and duties are carried out in full compliance with regulatory requirements, Absa Operational Risk Framework and internal Absa Policies and Standards

Manage risk and control effectively by applying applicable risk frameworks and embedding a positive risk culture. Understanding of own role in the end-to-end processes in which you play a part, including applicable risks and controls. Adhere to Absa’s policies and procedures applicable to own role, demonstrating sound judgment and responsible risk management. Report all risk events / incidents / issues using the defined process for your business area and help to understand why these happened and how to prevent them in future. Proactively look for ways to improve the control environment by considering what could go wrong in the processes you operate and how errors could be prevented. Continuous and proactive engagement with regulatory bodies, unions where applicable. All mandatory training completed to deadline.

Technical skills / Competencies

Experience, qualifications, and other requirements specific to the role

Experience:

Proven track record in the successful delivery of risk management. Exercising judgement for complex risk oversight decisions. Managing risk and reward.

Knowledge and Expertise

Knowledge:

First-class technical risk management skills. Excellent business awareness and specific industry / International Risk awareness. Detailed knowledge of risk management policy, procedures & pricing. Excellent knowledge of Country/sovereign risk issues.

Excellent knowledge of the social, economic, political, and regulatory environment within relevant country.

Absa Values

Absa’s Values and Behaviors represent the set of standards which governs the actions of all of us who work for the bank and against which the performance of every one of us in Absa are being assessed and rewarded:

I drive high performance to achieve sustainable results. I am obsessed with customer. I have an African heartbeat. I believe our people are our strengths.

Education

Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Business, Commerce and Management Studies (Required)

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