Operations Manager (Finance) at Kontak Recruitment

• An established financial services organisation is looking for an experienced Operations Manager to oversee the day-to-day management of its Operations Department. The role is responsible for ensuring efficient workflows, maintaining high service delivery standards, driving operational excellence, and supporting business growth through continuous improvement initiatives. The successful candidate will lead and develop operational teams within a fast-paced, target-driven environment while ensuring adherence to standard operating procedures, operational controls, quality standards, and performance expectations.
• This position requires a strong people leader with extensive operational management experience, preferably within the financial services or lending sector. The successful individual will be responsible for managing productivity, workflow, quality assurance, stakeholder relationships, training programmes, graduate development initiatives, and operational processes while driving accountability, performance, and customer service excellence across the department.

Minimum Requirements:

• Honours Degree in Finance or related qualification (NQF Level 7)
• Minimum 5 years’ solid people management experience managing a team of at least 8 employees
• 5–7 years’ experience within the financial services and/or lending industry preferred
• Experience with loan administration processes
• Understanding of accounting principles and banking applications/software
• Strong financial and accounting skills
• Ability to analyse and interpret financial statements, management accounts, historical trends, projections, cash flow information, and business performance indicators
• Knowledge of commercial credit products, loan procedures, and market trends
• Understanding of the full credit life cycle, including collections
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills including Pivot Tables and Lookups
• Strong analytical and critical thinking skills
• Excellent attention to detail
• Strong interpersonal and relationship management skills
• Customer service orientation
• Strong time management and multitasking abilities
• Effective problem-solving skills
• Strong business acumen
• Ability to lead, coach, mentor, and develop operational teams
• Ability to work effectively in a demanding, target-driven environment

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Prepare and oversee monthly audit and quality assurance reports, establish KPIs for new roles, monitor individual and team quality performance, communicate review outcomes, provide structured feedback, and drive continuous improvement in work quality and customer service delivery.
• Drive continuous process improvement initiatives, support change management, maintain and enforce SOP compliance, implement SOPs for new products and system changes, manage operational templates, and escalate system and process-related issues where required.
• Monitor operational communication channels and service levels to ensure business continuity and customer service excellence, including Information Boxes, Client Support Boxes, Partnership Application Processes, DBC Error Box, Connect Statements Box, WhatsApp Channels, and Telephone Lines.
• Monitor team performance against KPIs, implement corrective action, manage workflow and work-in-progress, resolve operational exceptions, review workload distribution, and support capacity planning and resource alignment.
• Maintain strong relationships with Business Development teams, provide affiliate application updates, remove operational bottlenecks, prioritise affiliate applications, manage workflow through to disbursement, and expedite high-priority applications while maintaining service standards.
• Lead, manage, coach, and develop the operational team through performance reviews, feedback sessions, team meetings, onboarding, probation management, mentoring, and development initiatives while ensuring appropriate staffing levels, accountability, service excellence, and alignment with company values.
• Design and deliver induction and technical training programmes, conduct onboarding reviews and performance assessments, provide training on loan application analysis and financial assessment principles, support understanding of Annual Financial Statements (AFS), Management Accounts, SARS requirements, and high-value applications, and drive continuous employee development.
• Manage graduate induction and onboarding programmes, oversee the three-month onboarding journey, conduct progress reviews, and provide ongoing mentoring and development support.
• Review competitor interest rate comparisons, prepare motivations for reduced interest rate approval requests, and review credit applications to support quality assurance and consistent decision-making.

Key Competencies

• Deciding and Initiating Action
• Leading and Supervising
• Working with People
• Analysing
• Planning and Organising
• Delivering Results and Meeting Customer Expectations
• Adapting and Responding to Change