Executive: Relationship Advice & Distribution at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• Accountable for developing the Relationship Advice & Distribution business strategy that clearly defines the business strategic objectives across geographic and provincial levels.
• Accountable for providing leadership to the Business Unit at national level.
• fResponsible for client acquisition, retention, share of wallet optimisation, driving growth in market share, enterprise development.
• Responsible for developing and exploiting business opportunities to optimize business profitability and customer satisfaction for the Relationship Advice & Distribution business.

Job Description

Key Accountabilities:

Develop Relationship Advice & Distribution strategy

• Formulate Relationship Advice & Distribution strategy into specific performance objectives contracted with the national management teams in line with business strategy.
• Assume ownership (sponsorship) on behalf of Relationship Advice & Distribution for the execution and delivery of assigned strategic objectives.
• Develop Relationship Advice & Distribution strategy for Affluent, Private and Wealth customers and largely aligned to Personal and Private Banking (PPB) strategic imperatives,
• Develop sales strategies to ensure optimal productivity for Relationship Advice & Distribution Financial Advisers.
• Develop a long-term strategy to maintaining and expand high net worth clients within the bank by providing personalised advice financial advice and solutions to clients, as well as distributing investment products and services to meet client needs and objectives.
• In partnership with Private and Wealth Bank channel and product houses leadership, increase penetration of Advice & Investments through revitalized banker/advisor strategy.
• Collaborate with key leaders to increase private bank penetration and Advice in key customer journeys.
• Ensure productivity improvements to drive long term growth.
• Drive the execution of the Relationship Advice & Distribution Strategy in conjunction with the National Management Team (PGM, Regional Managers and product partners) develop objectives by contracting deliverables with the team, ensuring the top-down filtering of these objectives.
• Accountable for achieving consistent and profitable revenue growth with the implementation of the strategic objectives.
• Ensure that approval and buy-in is obtained for the overall approach prior to execution by means of presentations and personal interactions to ensure effective change management.
• Convert the strategic objectives into tactical provincial plans that allow PGM’s, Regional Managers and the Branch Networks to compile performance plans for all staff in order to contract the sales targets.
• Manage the implementation of the Relationship Advice & Distribution National plans in order to determine the return on investment (ROI) of the strategy and objectives by stringent analysis of the sales and business performance.
• Contribute to the development of the budget (Short-term Plan), 18-month forecast (MTP) and RAF (Revised Annual Forecast) by providing input on the business plan and conducting sensibility checks on the financials
• Facilitate the formulation and management of provincial operational plans via planning sessions with stakeholders including banking and product partners.
• Represent the province at the Advice & Investment Exco, Board and other forums to provide feedback on province performance and future strategies to increase sales drive.
• Monitor and address sales performance within the province by reviewing relevant MI and removing barriers to achieve targets.
• Review capacity and growth of deployed resources in order to identify where resources should be reallocated, developing a short-, medium- and long-term deployment plan for the province to ensure sustainability of the business.
• Ensure review of the provincial training offering for the upskilling of staff, including compliance, product and sales training.
• Serve as the Key Risk owner for Relationship Advice & Distribution.

Accountability: Stakeholder Management

• Represent Relationship Advice & Distribution on a national level by building relationships with other business unit leaders and actively contributing on National (banking) forums.
• Provide consistent communication of Advice & Investment messaging as appropriate to the national, staff and stakeholders.
• Position Advice & Investment National staff to develop solid working relationships with the corresponding banking and product counterparts.
• Establish and maintain relationships with external product and service suppliers at National level.
• Focus on improved cross-selling, product penetration and client retention in collaboration with key banking and non-banking product partners.
• In collaboration with other business units promote lead generation, sharing of ideas and best practices to improve collaborative engagement across the bank.
• Work collaboratively to drive improved customer experience, improved quality of products and high standards of performance within the province.
• Translate and execute on interlock targets proactively with the business units and manage through regular and consistent reporting.
• Drive the integration and optimization of RB Advice distribution within the broader banking operation.

Accountability: Business Management:

• Formulate and manage the operational plans to achieve the targets.
• Agree targets and take accountability for the overall achievement of performance objectives in the business area in terms of cost management, customer experience, governance, risk and compliance.
• Review performance against balanced scorecard components as contracted and agreed with the Managing Executive, discuss gaps and agree action plans to close gaps.
• Analyse business performance to identify current and future trends and execute suitable plans to address as appropriately including the effective management of underperformance.
• Benchmark productivity of the Relationahip Advice & Distribution Financial Advisers against industry standard and through measures to improve productivity.
• Manages profitability & delivery of new business in the business through managing others and through operational excellence.
• Responsible for building & growing the business nationally and ensuring that the business meets its budget.
• Agree and manage service offerings and SLAs with internal customers (agree annually and measure monthly).
• Identify opportunities and implement marketing and sales initiatives/campaigns to increase sales volumes of the province in achievement of overall objectives
• Agree targets with Bank representatives at provincial level per segment and channel during annual target negotiations
• Communicate the targets to all staff by presenting the information, engaging on set targets and evaluating the achievement of targets during performance management discussions
• Ensure alignment of Relationship Advice & Distribution strategic plans with the bank’s focus areas to maximize value.

Accountability: People Management

• Ensure the development of a high-performing team through embedding formal. Performance Development and formal/informal coaching and mentoring as appropriate.
• Instill a culture of rigorous and robust performance management and recognition within the team to drive continual improvement and efficiency.
• Identify and execute training and development needs for managers and ensure they do the same for their teams.
• Conduct regular succession planning and talent management sessions to ensure ongoing development and improvement of the team.
• Develop, maintain, and execute a recruitment pipeline to grow and develop the team, aligned to the group HR capability and processes and well as the approved provincial workforce plans.
• Serve as the second level escalation point for all grievances raised within the business unit.
• Develop appropriate action items to address employee survey outcomes as appropriate for the business unit and province.
• Ensure a positive employee experience and support the group’s ambitions to become the employer of choice.

Accountability: Operations management, Governance and Control

• Collaborate closely with the Operations function to ensure effective alignment and provision of:
• Business Continuity
• Sales and support process mapping and documentation
• Advice process support and governance
• Analyse effectiveness of processes and systems in use and decide on the improvements to be implemented.
• Ensure the provincial staff complete all compliance/regulatory training and attestations and sign off for the Relationship Advice & Distribution area
• Escalation of deviations of policies and procedures to applicable risk, product and process owners, ensure appropriate consequence management is conducted in response to any breaches.
• Ensure the effective management and execution of the processes in respect of on/off boarding, systems and physical access control.

Accountability: Customer Services

• Engage regularly with the customer experience capability to gain insights and understanding into service-related issues, trends, performance and resulting actions.
• Work with Strategy and Customer team to resolve all escalations of client queries and/or complaints within the agreed turnaround times.
• Facilitate collaboration between managers to share information on common gaps and quality issues in service delivery.
• Monitor volumes and nature of complaints/queries received to ensure that customer service standards are upheld at a high level. Work with managers to develop corrective actions for recurring issues and request in-depth investigations take place.
• Liaise closely with the product support teams to monitor turnaround times, support agreements, issue management and performance overview in accordance with agreed service level agreements and product interlocks.

Education:

• NQF Level6: B Degree
• B Com Degree
• B Com Accounting/Legal
• CFP (Preferred)
• CFA or Actuary or MBA (preferred)

Experience:

• 15 years’ working experience in the financial services industry
• 8 – 10 years’ experience in a Senior Management / Executive level in an Insurance business/service sales or advice channel environment
• 5 years’ experience in managing Insurance Sales business or advice channel at a senior management role

Competencies:

Business Acumen

• The ability to understand financial and economic concepts/drivers; to identify, create and/or exploit opportunities.
• Inculcates a culture of frugality in dealing with organisational resources.
• Formulates proactive business strategies to take advantage of business conditions and to gain advantage over competitors.
• Balancing competing and compelling business priorities towards achievement of organisational objectives.
• Displays extensive understanding of the market and industry, in order to identify profitable business opportunities.
• Instils a culture that is supports entrepreneurial initiatives.

Strategic Capability

• The ability to evaluate and redirect organisation strategy, value proposition, and business strategy aimed at conceptualising a desired future state that promotes the viability of the organisation. Conceptualises and develops a unique, viable business strategy and a desired future state for the organisation to meet future demands. Continuously evaluates the relevance and viability of the organisational strategy and adapts and devises new strategies.
• Uses understanding of long-term issues, problems or opportunities as a basis for developing long-term strategies, objectives, and goals that will reposition the organisation.

Digital Acumen

• The ability to execute the digital agenda of the Business Unit.
• Ability to utilise digital technologies and systems effectively to enhance own, team and business performance and culture.
• Provide insights on emerging trends in digital transformation in order to shape new and different business models to support the strategy.
• Determine how to deliver the ultimate customer engagement digital experiences by measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of digital channels.

Creative and Innovative Thinking

• Required to develop innovative ideas, strategies and plans.
• Demonstrates ingenuity and curiosity to do things better.
• Creates the culture and environment within which others can challenge established traditions, reinvent the industry/environment for our partners and clients; uses initiatives, generates new ideas, experiments and thinks outside the box, e.g. new distribution channels, market creation.
• Demonstrates ingenuity and curiosity to do things better.

Customer Focus

• Extensive understanding of best practices for a customer focused culture and the management of customer experiences.

Inspirational Leadership

• The ability to inspire, motivate and direct individuals to take ownership of-, and achieve desired outputs.
• Articulates and promotes an inspirational and compelling vision for the organisation aimed at promoting its strategic objectives.
• Ensures that the core capabilities of the organisation is developed and maintained through focused training & development initiatives.
• Displays the characteristics of a transformational leader and thought leader in industry.

Collaboration & Influencing

• Utilisation of appropriate interpersonal styles to build, develop, empower, inspire and utilise effective teams towards goal achievement. Initiates collaboration with other groups or organisations toward common goals. Collaborate with key stakeholders within the organisation and external environment to promote a philosophy of collaboration. Promotes a culture of collaboration on all levels of the organisation. Drives teamwork and success through effective leadership. Creates an environment where team members consistently push to improve team performance and productivity.

Stakeholder Management

• Able to apply extensive stakeholder management in the building of a network amongst different stakeholders within and without the organisation that will help support the achievement of business goals.
• Evaluates the value of stakeholder relationships and recommends different tactics.
• In-depth understanding of how to manage conflicting needs/expectation of stakeholders.

Reasoning (Analysis)

• The ability to analyse- and quickly grasp the implications of a situation, relating data from different sources, critically evaluating and integrating information/facts, and diagnosing a problem.
• Responsible for the establishment of analytical and systems thinking to ensure effective problem solving in the business. Identifies multiple relationships and disconnects in processes in order to identify options and reach conclusions.
• Adopts a systems perspective, assessing and balancing vast amounts of diverse information on the varied systems and subsystems that comprise and affect the working environment.
• Able to integrate elements of problems and display the ability to understand and making sense of the inter relationships between critical elements and or impacting factors across the organisation.
• Based on trends, defines main business drivers in order to impact on decision making.

Interpersonal Effectiveness

• The ability to establish and maintain positive interpersonal relationships characterized by sensitivity, support, respect and constructive resolution of differences and of conflict.
• Instils an organisational culture that values effective interpersonal relations. Build mutually beneficial relationships to promote the achievement of the organization

Education

• Bachelors Degree and Professional Qualifications: Business, Commerce and Management Studies (Required)

End Date: July 25, 2025