Head: Credit Origination at Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA)

Job Description    

• The Head: Credit Origination is responsible for leading the origination and structuring of complex credit transactions across various sectors, e.g. infrastructure, sovereign, sub-sovereign, public sector projects for investment considerations in South Africa, the Rest of Africa and High Impact. This role is instrumental in ensuring that new transactions align with the DBSA’s mandate, risk appetite and strategic objectives. Applying technical and commercial expertise, and legal knowledge, the role supports decision-making by appraising new transactions, through conducting due diligence, credit assessment of financial and non-financial risks, financial modelling and well-structured credit risk mitigation strategies.

Key Responsibilities    
KEY PERFORMANCE AREAS

Key Managerial Accountability and Responsibilities

• Oversee the leadership and direction of the Credit Origination unit’s day-to-day activities.
• Provide expertise and advisory to the Unit and business teams, ensuring that risk is balanced and in accordance with the Bank’s risk appetite framework.
• Accountable for the sound governance of risk in the credit origination process, ensuring enforcement of the Bank’s credit-related policies and procedures.
• Accountable for the development and training needs of the Unit, ensuring that the Unit possesses the necessary skills to perform their mandate.
• Accountable for financial management of the Unit’s budget and responsible use thereof, ensuring adequacy of budgeting to fulfil duties and that the Unit does not incur UIFWe in its expenditure.
• Make presentations to the various investment committees (EXCO and Board level) on the risks and mitigation strategies to support sound and rigorous decision-making. 
• Accountable for the deal implementation, post approval, to the extent that all approved transactions are contractually bound in accordance with approved terms and conditions.
• Regular stakeholder engagement and collaboration both internally and externally representing the Bank, including involvement in special projects or in pursuit of establishing new product lines and appropriate forms of credit risk mitigation strategies.
• Apply expertise in ensuring that the Unit adopts best practice and leading supporting tools to effectively execute on its mandate.
• Define the Credit strategy of the Unit, ensuring that the Unit’s objectives align with the Bank’s corporate objectives and strategy.
• Drive the evaluation of strategic transactions, ensuring credit policies support the achievement of developmental and financial objectives.
• Contribute to innovative credit structuring solutions that enable greater access to finance while safeguarding sustainability.
• Balance portfolio growth with prudent credit risk management to achieve long-term financial resilience.

Deal Origination and Structuring

• Lead the Unit in the origination of complex credit transactions from a pipeline of potential projects sourced by the Business teams, assessing transactions against the Bank’s risk appetite.
• Undertake in-depth credit and financial analysis and due diligence on prospective transactions.
• Appraise, structure transactions to optimise risk-adjusted returns whilst achieving development impact.
• Collaborate with business, legal, technical and ESG teams to ensure comprehensive transaction evaluation.
• Contribute to due diligence activities, where required, including site visits, stakeholder interviews and due diligence data collection and synthesis.
• In conjunction with the business Heads, engage internally with project teams and externally with borrowers, government entities, project sponsors, and other
• Key risk-transfer / credit enhancing stakeholders to assess optimal financing needs and develop tailored solutions.
• Prepare and/or review investment memos for new appraisals that succinctly communicates the overall credit opinion and recommended terms and conditions of the prospective transactions.
• Provide credit advisory throughout the investment value chain.
• Perform risk governance oversight during appraisal stage, deal implementation and financial close stages in pursuit of achieving the Bank’s key corporate and strategic objectives.
• Drive an innovative culture within the Unit, by continuously scanning the environment to develop and adopt innovative risk mitigation structures (e.g. blended finance instruments, sustainable finance instruments, credit risk transfer and enhancement mechanisms).

Investment Risk Assessment, Financial Analysis and Risk Mitigation

• Responsible for ensuring that the Unit delivers on timely and quality risk assessments for credit and equity investments, inculcating a culture of rigour, applying sound judgement and advanced risk methodologies.
• Approve and/or recommend credit decisions within delegated authority levels to protect institutional capital.
• Provide expert credit input into structuring, mitigating and pricing of transactions to balance growth and risk appetite.
• Apply the Bank’s risk appetite framework, policies, procedures and credit risk mitigation strategies to ensure optimal credit risk transfer.
• Build and/or review and challenge model assumptions in financial models for prospective transactions.
• Review financial compliance of key financial terms and/or recommend and implement credit risk mitigants (e.g. conditions, covenants, collateral, guarantees), as required.
• Identify, mitigate and manage key quantitative and qualitative risks facing a prospective transaction.
• Apply and/or review credit rating methodologies aligned to underlying transaction structures to ensure that the credit profile is adequately encapsulated the risk-adjusted returns per policies.
• Undertake in-depth financial and cash-flow analysis of portfolio companies, evaluating performance against initial projections and market benchmarks
• Collaborate on initiation of portfolio performance reports, incorporating peer comparisons, sectors developments, and macroeconomic conditions affecting the Bank.
• Assess amendments to credit terms and provides recommendations for restructuring, covenant waivers, or rescheduling proposals as required.

Portfolio Integration

• Lead the Unit in the seamless transition of approved transactions into the Credit Portfolio Management unit.
• Lead the Unit in ongoing monitoring of early-stage performance, emerging risks that warrant escalation and reporting within the Bank.
• Maintain up-to-date credit ratings and internal loan classifications of new transactions, where required, prior to transition into portfolio management.
• Participate in the maintenance and improvement of the credit value chain, identifying process inefficiencies and supporting enhancements to credit systems.

Strategic Engagement and Governance, Policy

• Set, review, and enhance credit policies, frameworks, and risk assessment methodologies in line with regulatory and governance requirements.
• Ensure compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and internal risk policies.
• Provide thought leadership on credit risk trends, regulatory developments, and best practices.
• Deliver high-quality, timely submissions and recommendations to investments and credit committees.
• Responsible for maintaining a strong internal control environment, serving as the Unit’s risk owner for audit outcomes and consequences.
• Ensure timely and accurate reporting of key performance indicators, risks, and progress against strategic objectives to relevant internal and external bodies.

Stakeholder Engagement and Business Partnering

• Foster collaborative relationships with internal stakeholders to support effective deal structuring and decisionmaking.
• Manage relationships with external stakeholders, including regulators, co-investors, and rating agencies, to promote confidence in the DBSA’s credit processes.
• Facilitate clear and concise communication and build trust and credibility with internal and external stakeholders.
• Focus on understanding the strategic goals and needs, advise on key decisions to support your stakeholders.
• Leverage cross-functional and business data to inform strategic, operational and domain-specific decisions. Focus on value creation for the business, and functional stakeholders.

People Management

• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team, setting clear objectives, providing constructive feedback, fostering a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning to maximize individual and collective potential
• Drive talent development initiatives, including coaching, performance management, and career pathing, to build and retain a skilled and motivated team.
• Promote DBSA values and a culture of high performance through implementing performance management in line with the planned strategic objectives, goals, quality standards and agreed key performance measures using sound performance management principles.
• Contribute to building synergies & cooperation across functions in the DBSA.
• Live the DBSA values.

Digital Transformation

• Champion and drive digital transformation initiatives, leveraging technology to enhance operational efficiency, improve service delivery, and unlock new value streams within the DBSA.
• Foster a mindset of innovation, identifying opportunities to adopt emerging technologies and best practices to modernise processes and deliver impactful solutions.

Expertise & Technical Competencies    
Key Measurement of Outputs

• Enable successful fulfilment of the corporate disbursement targets, balancing risk and growth.
• Satisfactory customer centricity for internal stakeholders and the Bank’s clients.
• Maintenance of the asset quality within the Bank’s risk appetite and key risk indicators (e.g. NPL and credit loss ratio)
• Financial management of the Unit’s operational expenditure and approved financial budget within agreed upon utilisation targets.
• High quality due diligence and deal structuring in investment appraisals.
• Managing credit concentration risk within the Bank’s risk appetite.
• Sound risk governance and enforcement of the Bank’s policies and procedures, including contribution to the Bank wide governance and compliance targets.
• Effective leadership of the Unit, strengthening team cohesion and high performance, in alignment with the Bank’s values and culture.
• Management of performance outputs of staff using the performance management system and taking corrective action promptly and effectively.
• Turnaround time on new transactions (ERR to First Disbursement).
• Value and number of expired limits in the portfolio. 
• Timely identification of early warning indicators escalated and actioned for new transactions in appraisal or deal implementation stage.
• Management of team performance, talent development, and succession planning using the performance management system.

Minimum Qualification

• Postgraduate degree in Finance, Economics, Accounting or Credit / Risk Management or related field.

Minimum Experience

• A minimum 12 years of experience in credit risk analysis, portfolio monitoring, or financial analysis within a wholesale/investment banking or development finance environment.
• A minimum of 5 years in a senior leadership or management role within credit risk.
• Demonstrated in credit assessments, financial modelling and analysis across South Africa and the African markets.
• Strong capabilities in financial modelling and transaction structuring of complex and large exposures.
• Strong expertise in credit analysis and working with high-risk clients.
• Experience in applying strategic thinking in assessing and interpreting complex transactions.
• In-depth understanding of ESG principles, sustainable finance and blended finance frameworks.
• Demonstrated advanced credit analysis, reasoning and credit writing skills.
• Demonstrated advanced financial analysis and risk assessment capability.
• Sound knowledge of credit risk management principles and frameworks.
• Demonstrated knowledge of loan lifecycle and credit value chain processes.
• Familiarity with large and complex transactions in South Africa and the Rest of the African continent, including sovereign lending.
• Familiarity with large and complex transactions in DBSA mandated sectors.

Desirable Requirements

• Professional certification in Financial Risk Management, Chartered Financial Analysis or CA (SA) or equivalent.
• Strong understanding and experience of sovereign risk, infrastructure finance, and public sector lending.
• Demonstrated experience in working on bilateral, club or syndicated transactions with multilateral institutions, investment banks, government agencies and private sector sponsors in infrastructure.
• Experience in Development Finance Institution, banking, or investment environment.
• Sound knowledge, understanding and application with legislative frameworks applicable to investments.

Deadline:9th Setember,2026