Chief Financial Officer

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Job Summary

To lead the country Finance team in strengthening end-to-end reporting between the country and the regional processing centre, acting as the Finance Business Partner to the MD. This role ensures process and data integrity, compliance with governance requirements, supports business performance management across all functions, and provides accurate and timely management information through regular and ad-hoc reports, while managing the performance of the finance team.

Leadership of the Finance, Treasury, Sustainability and Strategy function at a country level including accountability for:
• To provide strong leadership to the country Finance, Treasury, Sustainability and Strategy teams and work to strengthen the end-to-end reporting between the country and the region.
• Be the Finance, Treasury, Sustainability and Strategy Senior Advisor to the Managing Director in country. Ensure appropriate controls and processes are in place in support of accurate and timely reporting of the financial data and the mitigation of potential risks therein.
• Ensure all Statutory financial reporting is compliant with international accounting standards (IFRS) and local regulations.
• Lead the assessment of competitor and other external data to support business strategy formulation.
• Play an instrumental role in the formulation, execution and tracking of strategy and related KPIs. Provide challenge and support to all business areas to drive sustainable performance.
• Develop the banks enterprise MI function, building strategic capability to support improved decision making and tracking.
• Drive business financial performance supported by actionable insightful, accurate reporting as well and enable the performance management of the other functions within the business.
• Enterprise-wide support for allocation of financial resources. Expert views on optimizing capital based on environmental factors across short-, medium- and long-term time horizons.
• To provide executive leadership to oversight teams in identifying and managing all risk types and liaising directly with the businesses as appropriate.
• Manage Tax risk within acceptable limits.
• Act as key contact on all matters across all stakeholder groups, including Regulators, Industry Associations, Regional stakeholders, Audit firms, Colleagues etc.

Job Description

Value Enabler (Applied)

As an Absa Managing Executive Leader, you are a Group Functional Executive in our leading Pan African Bank. As an influencer and value enabler in a business line capacity, you use your decades of industry experience, knowledge and insight from the competitive marketplace and internal and external data sources to execute the enterprise vision through your functions strategy applied in the line of business. You provide feedback and direction to the central functional unit value chain. You actively remove stumbling blocks for cooperation and delivery across the Bank. You take direction from Business needs, balancing central functional purpose while incorporating the contributions of value defenders into the business value chain.  You influence, set and adopt group architecture. You communicate with integrity and conviction, setting the tone and context of the function for others to follow. You ask provocative questions to trigger innovation and organisational renewal. You set and drive goals to optimally enable businesses to capitalise on opportunities and maximise profit and customer value.

Financial Reporting (15%)

·        Responsible for the production of monthly financial data and commentary relating to the business

·        Responsible for the accuracy of all financial reporting, including Enterprise reporting to ARO, functional reporting to Group, Regulatory reporting, Tax returns, Statutory publications, management reporting and other reporting as may required from time to time.

·        Provide strategic analytical review of key performance lines to ensure potential risks and opportunities are quickly identified and suitable actions are undertaken

Provide timely, accurate data across the business in support of action oriented decisions. Strategically build out the skills and capability of the Data and Analytics function to increasingly support optimised, digital and insightful data to all areas of the business.

Financial Resource Management (10%)

·        Maintain oversight of capital, ensuring it is managed as a resource and returns are optimised.

·        Establish and manage a robust procedure for the regular review of the full year forecasts

·        Ensure rigorous cost management within country by implementing a highly structured budget, monitoring and reporting process and instilling discipline within the team around cost control.

·        Monitor annual resource utilization and implement strategies to improve the efficient allocation and utilization of resources within the country.

·        Drive the effective identification, funding and resourcing of new change initiatives within the country.

Responsible for facilitating the agreement of and budgeting for Economic Transfer Agreements (ETAs) from Absa Regional Operations (ARO) business.

Financial Processing (10%)

·        Maintain a robust process for processing accruals on all profit/cost centres for accuracy and completeness.

·        Ensure robust procedure set in place and adhered to with regards to the recovery of costs and monies outstanding from other business units.

Ensure that the process for transfer charging and recovering the South Africa costs is robust and aligned, as much as possible, to Value Based Management principles. Process Payments accurately, with appropriate controls and in a timely fashion.

Treasury Management (10%)

·        Driving Treasury Execution Strategy

·        Overall financial health and operations

·        Ensure ROI, strengthened investor relations and capital structure.

Sustainability (10%)

·        Develop and implement sustainability strategies while considering the environmental, social and governance impacts of the bank’s operations

·        Identify and manage environmental impacts areas such as carbon emissions, waste management, resource consumptions and renewable energy integration

·        Drive social initiatives related to diversity and inclusion, community engagement and employee wellbeing, human rights and philanthropy.

·        Establish and maintain robust governance frameworks, ethics policies and accountability mechanisms to ensure compliance and responsible business practices

·        Engage with internal and external stakeholders including investors, customers, employees and regulatory bodies to promote transparency and address sustainability concerns

·        Oversee the preparation and publication of sustainability reports ensuring compliance with relevant regulations and industry standards

·        Assess potential sustainability risks, develop mitigation strategies and monitor emerging trends and regulations int eh sustainability and ESG landscape

Strategy Development and Execution (10%)

·        Ensure appropriate controls around the treatment and reporting of financial resources. Actively test and monitor to ensure a robust financial control environment.

·        Monitor the external business and market environment and develop/amend bank’s strategy as and when required in partnership with relevant stakeholders.

·        Develop and implement timely corrective actions with respect to country goals, business and financial plans to mitigate issues emanating from threats and opportunities arising from internal and/or external environmental changes.

·        Ensure the bank is well positioned to provide competitive and industry leading practices, and the delivery of excellent service to our customers and stakeholders.

·        Provide frameworks to ensure robust and consistent approach to evaluating the use of financial resources in business decisions

·        Lead the short, medium and long term financial planning processes, incorporating the overall operating environment and strategic objectives of the firm

Internal and External Stakeholder Management (10%)

·        Establish and maintain networks of external stakeholder relationships in order to proactively identify opportunities to grow the products and  services of the Bank.

·        Effectively communicate developments within areas of activity to all relevant internal and external stakeholders.

Governance (10%)

·        Establish and maintain an effective working relationship between the bank, Absa Regional Operations & Group reporting lines

·        Review monthly performance against budget on all cost centres and ensure that any excesses are challenged/agreed.

·        Ensure System Analysis Program (SAP) hierarchy maintained to enable efficient reporting.

·        Identify and drive through process improvements, without loss of integrity

·        Full control of the Eliminations process and ensure all outstanding’s are followed and escalation process established.

·        Undertake high level review of all other profit/cost centre reports for accuracy.

·        Review accounts reconciliation process and drive remediations and escalations as necessary.

·        Establish processing for reviewing monthly performance with key relationships.

·        Maintain effective controls around vendor payments to minimise any associated risks. Proactively review, recommend, and implement within appropriate governance frameworks and changes to the payments process to enhance effectiveness.

·        Safeguard the integrity and reputation of the bank by ensuring that all oversight functions operate within legal and regulatory requirements

·        Determine action plans to effectively reduce and manage risk issues related to Internal Audit findings, Management Assurance findings, Compliance issues, etc….

·        Interact with appropriate management specialist areas to ensure an understanding of the requirements and that risk policies and processes incorporate all the necessary elements.

·        Fulfil a governance role in serving as a member of in-country executive and management committees.

Procurement Management (10%)

·        Oversee the development and execution of commercial solutions targeted at realising significant value for the Bank whilst creating alignment with the service, category and supplier strategies.

Role/Personal Specifications

General:

·        Certified Accountant (preferably Fellow of ACCA/ CIMA)

·        8-15years Management experience

Specific

·        Knowledge of cost and investment reporting

·        Good understanding financial services industry and its impact and influence on Absa

·        Business analysis and reporting

·        Relationship management

·        Knowledge of financial reporting general ledger systems

·        Familiarity with relevant sustainability and ESG regulations, guidelines and reporting requirements

Preferred

·        Sound knowledge of the Absa businesses

·        Knowledge of the Bank’s financial reporting process

·        Working in an environment of change

·        Experience of statutory and management reporting

·        Experience of SAP

Education

Bachelor’s Degree: Accounting