Controller Risk Management, Governance and Control at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Key Accountabilities

Coordination of External Financial Reporting Risk (FRR) and ownership of the Balance Sheet Attestation Tool (i.e., Consigno) across the Group:

• Ensure the operation of a robust FRR Governance process, including the review and consolidation of information and the production of management information required for FC attestation, AFRC and other forums (e.g., GLRS’s) across all clusters, countries, and entities.
• Full understanding of the allocated business or cluster Balance sheet through performing monthly analytical review and variance analysis and through discussions with business. Provide output of analysis to stakeholders.
• Support Business Unit owner for Consigno and other Financial Reporting attestation processes. This includes monitoring of system performance, and co-ordination of remedial actions for system failures and other issues.
• Provide appropriate management information to process owners for consideration before communication to Finance Management on the assessment of FRR, ensuring accurate and validity of information and high quality and appropriate commentary.
• Ad hoc projects that require timely and sustainable resolution.
• Produce management information packs and presentations to support the risk assessment of FRR to relevant Risk Committees.
• Produce and communicate appropriate Key Risk Indicators (KRI’s) to monitor the level of financial reporting risk and effectiveness of controls, to ensure that the Key Controls are appropriately implemented and understood by stakeholders.
• Monitoring and tracking remediation plans resulting from the above.
• Engaging with external auditors on Financial Reporting Risk.

Coordination of Monthly, Quarterly and Annual commentary on Balance Sheet movements:

• Obtaining commentary at reporting periods on relevant clusters to be used by senior stakeholders as part of the briefing notes on Balance Sheet movements.
• Obtaining commentary and articulating this commentary to be suitable for commentary sent to the Prudential Authority (PA).
• Providing suitable answers to the PA on questions raised on Balance Sheet movements in the regulatory returns.

Understand of the Groups Financial Reporting processes, systems, Controls, policies and frameworks:

• Develop an appropriate knowledge of the financial reporting systems and processes that operate across businesses within Absa.
• Develop a working understanding of Absa Financial Reporting policies and risk management frameworks in order to assess compliance in relevant areas.
• Provide support for Financial Reporting policies and risk management frameworks.
• Input into the operational planning of assurance and conformance testing plans to support risk assessments; and
• Assist business to document action plans for risk mitigation identified during Analytical review, GLRS’s, conformance testing or in the KRI process.
• Provide training on Financial Reporting policies and risk management frameworks.

Provide support to other process executors through motivation and employee engagement:

• Understanding and managing team dynamics to maximise performance.
• Escalate issues around allocation of resources to process architects’ tasks to ensure delivery of team objectives.
• Ensure continued development of resources, through couching and mentoring, to empower value added delivery of tasks.

Process Execution: Provide inputs and execution of quality control and process improvements:

• Ensure alignment of process with organizational strategy; take accountability for relevant processes within area of responsibility and ensure delivery and maintenance of standardized processes and controls.
• KPI's, and performance management thereof.
• Constantly review and improve processes (automation included) to drive and implement a sustainable and effective process in support of quality and accuracy.
• Drive sustainable cost and processing efficiencies through continuous innovation, industry benchmarking and alignment to best practices.
• Recommend areas for improvement in order to reduce cycle times, improve productivity, create capacity, and improve process reliability and customer satisfaction.
• Management of relevant executors of processes within ambit of control including coordination and management of capability and performance.
• Assist in the implementation of new and/or enhanced processes.
• Identify activity-specific risks and work with Process Owner / Process Architect to mitigate risks.
• Maintain awareness of own activities and the impact thereof on related / inter-dependent activities.
• Actively supports the operational effectiveness of the Consigno system.

Role/Person Specification

Knowledge & Skills

• Exceptional academic track record
• Understanding of financial reporting processes and related controls (Expert)
• Ability to identify control gaps and weaknesses (Expert)
• Ability to analyse and interpret financial data (Expert)
• Ability to write concise effective reports (Expert)

Education and experience 

• CA (SA) is required
• One year + post articles experience is preferred, ideally in a Banking environment gained from Finance, Product