Business Development Director: Fraud and Identity at LexisNexis South Africa

About the Role

• The Business Development Director (BDD) will own the strategy, pipeline, and execution for driving adoption of our Fraud & Identity solutions across South Africa and key African markets. The role includes full accountability for the end-to-end sales cycle, from opportunity identification to contract execution and handover to Customer Success.
• This position also requires close coordination with internal Legal, Pricing and Technical teams. The Director will lead the commercial contracting process, provide inputs to Legal, support client-side negotiations and navigate local cloud, data protection and regulatory requirements that apply to SaaS and API integrations.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead enterprise sales of Fraud & Identity solutions including device fingerprinting, behavioral biometrics, digital identity intelligence, email and phone risk, account takeover prevention and API-based risk scoring
• Own the complete sales cycle from prospecting to closing enterprise SaaS and API deals
• Coordinate legal contracting with the internal Legal team, prepare commercial inputs and support negotiation of SaaS, data, cloud and API terms with clients
• Ensure that contracting processes reflect South African regulations including POPIA, SARB digital onboarding expectations and cloud hosting rules
• Build and execute go-to-market plans for South Africa and priority African markets aligned to fraud trends, digital adoption and market demand
• Develop and maintain strong senior stakeholder relationships including CISO, CIO, Head of Fraud, Head of Digital Channels and  Head of Risk
• Partner with Product, Technical Consulting, Pricing, Legal and Customer Success to ensure seamless onboarding and implementation
• Represent LexisNexis at fraud, identity, digital banking and cybersecurity industry events

Required Experience

• Proven track record of selling cloud-based Fraud & Identity technology into South African banks
• Minimum 5 years of enterprise B2B sales experience including at least  5 years directly in Fraud & Identity, digital risk or identity analytics
• Demonstrated success closing multi-year SaaS or API contracts with Tier 1 and Tier 2 financial institutions
• Deep understanding of fraud threats across banking, fintech, payments, telecom and regulated gaming including account takeover, synthetic identity, first-party fraud, social engineering, APP SCAM, and mule activity
• Familiarity with POPIA, FSCA expectations, SARB onboarding guidance and cloud hosting or data residency considerations for SaaS deployments
• Experience coordinating contracting processes with legal teams including commercial structuring and client-side legal engagement
• Ability to navigate procurement, InfoSec due diligence, vendor risk assessment and technical validation processes
• Strong commercial, negotiation and executive communication skills
• Experience with digital onboarding, identity proofing, risk-based authentication or device and behavioral risk intelligence
• Background working with fraud operations, digital channels, risk and identity teams in telco, ecommerce or gaming sectors
• Knowledge of financial crime compliance or AML and KYC processes is beneficial but not required
• French or Portuguese language skills for broader African engagements.
• Commercially strong, highly independent and deeply familiar with the fraud and digital identity landscape in South Africa. 
• They are confident navigating complex enterprise sales cycles and coordinating legal contracting. 
• They understand cloud architecture and SaaS regulatory considerations, and they operate comfortably at senior stakeholder level across fraud, digital, risk and technology functions.
• The candidate brings strategic thinking combined with hands-on execution and can accelerate adoption of Fraud & Identity solutions across South Africa and emerging African markets.