Head Intelligence & Surveillance at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

About the Job

Job Summary

• Financial Crime is responsible for ensuring that the Group manages the risks of money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions and bribery and corruption and, in so doing, protects the Group, its customers and its employees, as well as society at large, from the negative effects of financial crime. The Financial Crime function implements a Financial Crime Risk framework to meet the requirements of anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism, anti-bribery & corruption and economic sanctions laws and regulation.
• The Head of the Intelligence, and Surveillance (I & S) will be responsible for all aspects of monitoring, surveillance, investigation and reporting as well as for the identification and assessment of new and emerging threats against the Bank. Also formulating the strategic direction and appropriate intelligence led activity across Africa to ensure that we have a top in class capability which enables the firm the appropriately manage financial crime and terrorist financing risk and which ensures we are compliant with all related regulatory requirements and expectations.
• A key requirement of the role is to build out a robust, firm-wide platform and team to enable a data driven approach to managing risk and which also drives a top-class analytics and intelligence capability to enhance and strengthen the firm's management of financial crime and terrorist financing.

Job Description

The key specific accountabilities of this role would be the following:

• Leading the development of the I&S capability for Absa through the development and implementation of a Target Operating Model;
• Designing and delivering a robust surveillance, monitoring and reporting platform and capability which meets the requirements and expectations of all regulatory stakeholders;
• Leading on the development of intelligence products that are both strategic and operational in nature; Assessing the impact of Financial Crime threats and risks on a global scale, breaking down jurisdiction and business silo barriers – applying a risk based approach to business unit; customer; jurisdiction and product;
• Taking the outcomes from intelligence led activity and ensuring these are embedded in the business;
• Working with local regulatory authorities to develop solutions that are of relevance to the Bank;
• Act as a primary contact for working with law enforcement and government agencies on Financial Crime matters/issues;
• Working closely with analytics in the development of a data acquisition strategy and deployment of supporting toolsets;
• Lead and build a global analytics capability to support and enhance existing functionality whilst developing analytic based tools to support the next generation of intelligence development, investigations and monitoring detection;
• The development of this analytics capability is considered critical to the future management of Financial Crime risk, where exploitation of traditional and non-traditional data sources is key to countering an ever evolving threat profile;
• Directly accountable for defining the strategy for a data and analytics capability to support the I&S capability and the broader Financial Crime function;
• Lead and drive collaboration and convergence of economic crime disciplines to further improve the effectiveness of Absa’s risk mitigants
• Play a pro-active and leading role in driving external and industry wide impact to manage and mitigate financial crime risk – this includes BASA, SABRIC, SAMLIT, SARS etc
• Build and grow strong external relationships and engagements which positively contribute to Absa’s crime fighting capabilities i.e. United for Wildlife, DPCI, National Prosecuting Authority, Financial Intelligence Centre

Accountability: Intelligence

• Providing a data capability to support strategic intelligence activities;
• Utilising internal & external data to undertake holistic reviews of high risk customer segments, industries and financial crime typologies;
• Thematic trend analysis of internal risk events (SARS / Court Orders / Exits / Payment breaches); and
• Working in conjunction with the local FIU to support public/private partnership with external agencies to support the Counter-Terrorism and Anti-Money Laundering agenda

Accountability: Monitoring

• Utilise the rich sources of Customer, Transactional and Account data to develop flexible rule based profiling models to monitor and detect on-going Financial Crime red flags;
• Drive the delivery of the next generation of analytics based monitoring capabilities through the development of statistical based detection models;
• Undertake analytic based assessments to validate Financial Crimes compliance with key policies, controls and regulations; and
• Potential to provide an analytics capability to support the Optimisation team within Transaction Monitoring.

Accountability: Stakeholder management and leadership

• Initiates early engagement with key stakeholders to ensure effective partnership both internally and externally;
• Provides guidance to the Business as a consequence of outcomes and outputs from intelligence driven activity;
• Leads by example, appreciates their role in providing guidance, education and training to others;
• Able to clearly navigate and articulate the importance of the Financial Crime Control Environment to the business that is as a consequence of intelligence activity, whether internally or externally driven;
• Able to educate colleagues and skilfully provide simple explanations and real world case studies;
• Able to effectively present/ facilitate FC training if required;
• Embraces change and sponsors improvements as a consequence of the outputs of intelligence led or driven activity; and
• Technology & Change – Work closely with Technology & Change functions to build an industry leading surveillance capability.

Accountability: Decision making and problem solving

• The role requires the build out of a pioneering capability that’s key to the Financial Crime industry, the role holder must therefore be innovative and forward thinking in their approach by keeping up to date with the latest technologies across industry and the evolving regulatory landscape;
• Through understanding the changing Financial Crime landscape, applying those changes in Absa yet mindful of impact of decisions on customers, business relationships and SA and ARO economies; with cognisance to the greater globe;
• Able to understand the issue in context by taking a holistic view an able to analyse and recommend intelligence steps;
• Identify data trends and analyses whether the business is equipped to mitigate the risk effectively, taking appropriate oversight to ensure appropriate corrective action or escalation;
• Challenging existing processes and capabilities by designing new ways of working; and
• Exploring opportunities for improving existing capabilities through intuitive use of new analytic based approaches.

Accountability: Risk and Control

• All Absa colleagues have to ensure that all activities and duties are carried out in full compliance with regulatory requirements, Enterprise Wide Risk Management Framework and internal Absa Policies and Policy Standards.

Accountability: Regulatory and global trends and threats

• Monitor, track and create awareness of changing regulatory trends regionally and globally.
• Analyse and evaluate local, regional and international financial crime threats to understand and map Absa’s risk
• Maintain a good working relationship with the relevant regulatory bodies, and in so doing help position Absa as a leader of excellence in the fight against financial crime.
• Represent Absa, where necessary, on regulatory platforms (such as SAMLIT)

Accountability: Liaison across Financial Crime

• Play a lead role in driving learnings and transfer of knowledge/ actions to teams within Intelligence and Surveillance to ensure an increase risk mitigation and management
• Maintain strong working relationships with colleagues across Financial Crime Team to ensure greater efficiencies in the way we work and minimize duplication in efforts

People Management

• Drive the building of fit – for –purpose capacity for Intelligence and Surveillance to meet customer needs
• Play a leadership role and end to end people management function to a team of people leaders specialist and junior investigators
• Lead by example; appreciate the importance of providing guidance, coaching and training to others
• Oversight and accountability for outputs from the team and the communication of these to stakeholders
• Embrace change and open to adaptation in ways of working to enable improved employee experience and engagement

Education and Experience Required

• At least 10 years experience in the field of forensic/corporate investigations either within a bank, consultancy or law firm.
• Experience in Financial Crime Compliance or Anti- money laundering within a Financial Institution
• Relevant B-degree in Law, Accounting or Risk Management.
• 5 – 8 years experience in a senior management position
• Excellent written communication skills and very strong report writing skills
• Strong inter-personal skills and ability to articulate messages
• Thorough understanding of SA/ARO’s political economies
• Strong network of regulatory/law enforcement/intelligence community experts

Preferred

• Certificate in Money Laundering Control, ACAMS Certificate or Certified Fraud Examiner (ACFE).
• A strong background in forensic/corporate investigations at a senior level
• Subject matter expert (SME) in Financial Crime Compliance
• Experience in data analytics

Knowledge & Skills:

• Ability to distil complex issues to clear and concise briefings for senior management;
• Ability to build and sustain a high performing team;
• Strong leadership skills – ability to encourage, engage, and empower;
• Excellent negotiating and interpersonal skills;
• Ability to navigate in a complex organization and work within a matrix structure.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience of managing issues across multiple business areas and jurisdictions; Preferred
• A law enforcement or intelligence agency background would be advantageous;
• Subject matter expert in Financial Crime data with a proven track record in transforming raw data into meaningful and actionable intelligence;
• Several years’ experience in utilising analytic tools for data exploration, analysis and visualisation within the Financial Services / Financial Crime industry;
• Experience in statistical modelling and big data technologies (Hadoop / Graph Databases);
• In-depth understanding of a Financial Institutions systems infrastructure (Customer, Transactional, Payments) and Financial Crime monitoring and detection systems;
• Experience in a Financial Crime Intelligence discipline and familiarity with key concepts of AML, Sanctions, and ABC risk management;
• Experience in managing culturally diverse teams in different geographic locations;

Competencies:

• Deciding and initiating action
• Learning and researching
• Entrepreneurial and commercial thinking
• Relating and networking
• Adapting and responding to change
• Persuading and influencing
• Creating and innovating

Education

• Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Business, Commerce and Management Studies (Required)