Executive Operations and Client Services

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

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.

Job Summary

To lead operations and client services including incident management for Transactional and Deposits.

Functional Strategy

Set and cascade the Functional strategy with supporting operating for effective and efficient execution of operations, client services and incident management.

• Formulate and influence the strategy to minimise impact to clients during incident management in order to improve the client experience.
• Agree, monitor and interpret relevant Key Risk and Performance indicators. Ensure remedial measures are taken where appropriate to reduce financial and reputational risk.
• Formulate and drive remediation plans with stakeholders across the bank for industry impacting incident whether the incident originated within Absa or external banks
• Define and manage internal as well as external communication protocols for outages
• Oversee the operational crisis management from a product/channel/frontline perspective
• Manage national support escalations for complex client and or technical issues which cannot be resolved through the standard support processes (this may include but not be restricted to fraudulent cases)

Operational Excellence

Oversee the design, implementation, maintenance and continuous improvement of operational activities.

Change and Programme Management

Oversee and direct the implementation of change programmes aimed at driving business strategy and improving operational efficiency.

Coordinate and manage the technology

Interlock with (including incidents/changes/DR) Global Finance and Trade products/channels and CSS Operations interlock with the respective IT support teams for South Africa and Rest of Africa where relevant

Agree, manage and track appropriate service level agreements for standard and major incidents with respective IT support areas across the bank with the consideration of associated vendor agreements

Accountability business Strategy Incident Management

• Assist in the development, together with key stakeholders across the bank. strategy encompassing the end-to-end client experience relating to Transactional and Deposit products.
• Determine service standards and metrics. KPI’s and SLA’s to meet the business imperatives
• Embed a pro-active strategy to mitigate / prevent incidents from happening or re-occurring through appropriate root cause analysis and preventative measures
• Stay aligned with Absa Regulatory team to ensure that industry principles are being applied when taking decisions on the remediation of industry impacting incidents
• Conduct incident management benchmarking against local peers using relevant and updated information as made available in the industry

Business Risk, Governance and Compliance Management

Oversee the implementation of, and conformance to, Group Risk and Compliance requirements within the operating environment, in line with set risk appetite.

Ensure the fulfilment of all required governance activities, including tracking and reporting

Stakeholder Management

Actively promote and manage the collaborative engagement of internal and external stakeholders, including regulators, suppliers, clients, service providers, business partners and other Absa entities.

Accountability: Business & Operational Management

• Coordinate and implement the necessary service level agreements across the IT support teams to underpin the service strategy.
• Monitor and remediate (where necessary) risk measures relating to the SA and RoA business
• Ensure that appropriate crisis management procedures are developed and embedded into the business
• Manage and coordinate responses to a major outage/crisis through relevant communication (internal and clients) and contingency plans to minimise client impact and reduce financial/reputation loss for the bank
• Drive improvements in system monitoring and incident detection on a global scale
• Identify opportunities in which tools and technology can be exploited to deliver complimentary incident management services
• Remain up to date with all key developments taking place in the IT/Business industry to anticipate / mitigate incidents

Accountability: Business communication

• Manage internal and client communication (including media press releases where required) for the bank during major outages
• Ensure that clients and stakeholders are informed of planned changes that may cause down-time or impact to clients
• Agree and Manage Client Leading Indicators with stakeholders across the bank in support of the overall strategy

Accountability: People Management

• Create a world class product organisation through the recruitment & management of leading service professionals
• Work across the matrix environment of the Bank to drive behavious and performance
• Continuously up-skill staff regarding service and product knowledge, including knowledge of related processes and external market knowledge
• Managing skills training and knowledge transferal within the team
• Run intra-team training to increase skill level of all team members
• Transfer and sharing of best practices to ensure staff receive appropriate training and development opportunities
• Ensure that we adhere to a high performing organisation profile and that the necessary tools are in place to maximise the ability of our people

Education and Experience Required

• B-degree in related field
• At least 10 years’ working experience preferably across multiple disciplines in financial services.
• Deep payments knowledge and expertise including payment rails.
• 10 years’ experience in interacting with senior stakeholders and clients.
• At least 10 years management experience and engagement with senior stakeholders

Education

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

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised