Manager Payments at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Key Responsibilities:  

Operations Management:

• Translate and implement the Digital Payments Operations strategy into actionable operational plans.
• Provide regular feedback to the Head of International Payments on progress and performance against plans.
• Liaise with product house to keep abreast of trends in product processing and administration.
• Regulate work volumes to prevent backlogs and manage capacity to keep within agreed turnaround times.
• Sign, update and manage SLAs with stakeholders/strategic business units that Digital Payments Operations provides a service to.
• Provide input to process engineers, custodians and owners on the design and implementation of new processes.
• Maintain and regularly review the effectiveness of processes used in the clean payment environment and identify ways for improvement.
• Report all proposals before and during the process through to the Head of International Payments.
• Monitor and optimize process hand-offs between Payments and its stakeholders including other departments within Digital Payments Operations.
• Ensure continuous and disruption-free access to systems by monitoring and maintaining access to all systems through SLA agreements with Group IT.

Risk Management:

• Communicate processes, control requirements and risk management framework to all team members.
• Work with the Head of Digital Payment Operations, Head of International Payment, Risk Officers and other Managers within operations to understand and implement actions required to close out audit findings.
• Complete the required compliance and attestations.
• Log all Risk and Loss events as a result of error or fraud highlighted in the department.
• Follow up with the Group Forensics to ensure that the issues are thoroughly investigated and closed or escalated as per policy.

Finance:

• Rigorously monitor expenditure against approved budgets and put measures in place to address variances.
• Check with the team leaders/managers to ensure that all commissions from payments processed are recovered from the Business Units for each payment transaction.
• Monitor and control all General Ledgers accounts to ensure that the correct transactions are posted to the relevant accounts.

Reporting:

• Sign off end of day reports to control workflow and check that all items have been actioned and entries (Payment queues) are cleared by the team.
• Minute departmental meetings, best practice meetings, changes in the Absa policies that have an impact on the operations environment and store on the share drive for ease of reference.

People Management:

• Manage a team of payment teams leaders, consultants and specialist to ensure effective daily operations.
• Determine and analyze development needs for the team and ensure that identified training requirements are budgeted for and executed.
• Establish and maintain a succession plan for the team.
• Interview and recruit new members for the team, including determining appropriate compensation levels with input from HR.

Education and Experience Required:

• B-degree in or equivalent NQF level 6 qualification
• 7 years’ experience in Payments Operations/Processing environment
• 4 years’ experience in a management role within a Payments Processing environment
• 3 years’ experience in Vendor Selection and Service Level Agreement

Education

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