Product Owner and Core Banking Platform Lead at Investec

Description

• The Account Services Platform delivers the core technical capabilities for account-based and transactional banking services in the UK. The team is responsible for reconciliation, reporting, financial controls, and accurate financial representation of client transactions, while working in an agile, delivery-focused environment with close collaboration across channels, operations, risk, and finance. 
• You will leads the vision, strategy, and roadmap for the UK transactional banking platform, delivering secure, scalable, and compliant account services. The role drives product value by balancing customer needs, business priorities, regulatory requirements, and technology modernisation, while providing strategic leadership, people leadership, and coaching to cross-functional teams across the UK and South Africa. It also fosters strong stakeholder relationships, promotes collaboration, and ensures successful product delivery and continuous platform evolution.  
• The Core Banking Platform provides the account, ledger, product configuration, balance, interest, fees, overdraft and servicing capabilities that underpin UK transactional banking. The platform enables current accounts, savings products, accurate financial representation, reconciliation, reporting and controlled integration across Cards, Payments, Channels, Client Lifecycle, Finance, Risk, Operations and Data. 
• You will be accountable for the product vision, strategy, roadmap and measurable outcomes for the Bank's core banking capability. The role balances client outcomes, business priorities, regulatory obligations, financial control, operational resilience, platform sustainability and long term technology evolution. 
• This is a senior platform product role responsible for shaping the evolution of a critical banking capability. The role requires close partnership with Engineering, Architecture, Operations, Risk, Finance, Product, Compliance, Service Management and strategic technology partners to ensure the platform is secure, resilient, scalable, well governed and aligned to the Bank's strategic objectives. 

Key Responsibilities

As Leader and Product Owner, you will: 

• Define, own, and communicate the platform vision, strategy, roadmap, and measurable outcomes aligned with the Bank's strategic objectives. 
• Own the end-to-end product lifecycle, from discovery and prioritisation through delivery, adoption, and continual optimisation. 
• Establish and manage a value-driven product backlog, balancing customer value, commercial priorities, regulatory requirements, operational resilience, and technical debt
• Ensure product configuration and change governance is controlled, tested, documented and auditable, including changes to product setup, account rules, fees, interest, overdrafts, limits and servicing capabilities. 
• Maintain a strong focus on ledger integrity, accurate financial representation, reconciliation, reporting quality, auditability, data lineage and financial controls across all platform changes. 
• Translate business strategy into platform capabilities by working closely with Engineering, Architecture, Operations, Risk, Finance, Product, Compliance, Service Management and other consuming platforms. 
• Lead prioritisation and dependency management across Cards, Payments, Channels, Client Lifecycle, Finance, Risk, Operations, Reporting and Data, ensuring platform decisions are made with an enterprise view. 
• Lead Agile planning, product governance and delivery alignment across cross-functional teams, ensuring outcomes, risks, dependencies and decisions are visible and actively managed. 
• Define and monitor product success through KPIs, OKRs, client insights, service health, control metrics, operational outcomes and delivery metrics, using data to inform product decisions and investment priorities. 
• Drive platform modernisation through well governed APIs, resilient integration patterns, scalable configuration, automation and event driven capabilities where they improve speed, control, reliability, resilience or client outcomes. 
• Shape the long term evolution of the Core Banking Platform, ensuring product decisions support future modernisation, portability, sustainability and strategic technology transformation where required. 
• Identify and manage strategic risks, dependencies and delivery impediments, ensuring risks to client outcomes, regulatory obligations, financial control, operational resilience and business value are understood and addressed. 
• Manage strategic technology partner relationships, ensuring roadmap alignment, release awareness, platform constraints, support performance, escalation routes and value realisation are actively understood and managed. 
• Lead organisational change by communicating platform strategy, supporting business readiness and driving successful adoption of new capabilities across Product, Operations, Finance, Risk, Service and Technology teams. 
• Partner with Service Management, Operations, Engineering and Risk to improve platform health, service stability, supportability, incident learning, root cause remediation and continuous improvement. 
• Coach and mentor Product Owners, Business Analysts and platform SMEs, setting standards for discovery, prioritisation, backlog quality, governance, decision making, stakeholder engagement and value measurement. 
• Promote a strong culture of ownership, collaboration, accountability and continuous improvement across all jurisdictions (UK, SA, India).  

Qualifications, Experience and Skills

Experience & Skills 

• Significant experience in Product or Application Ownership within Financial Services or Banking, ideally with exposure to core banking, transactional banking, deposits, savings, current accounts or ledger based platforms. 
• Proven experience delivering large scale platform, core banking or transactional banking transformation initiatives in complex, regulated environments. 
• Strong understanding of core banking platforms, APIs, event-driven architecture, microservices, integration patterns, and modern technology platforms.  
• Experience with one or more modern core banking platforms such as Mambu, Finacle, Temenos, Thought Machine, Oracle FLEXCUBE or similar would be advantageous. 
• Strong understanding of account lifecycle, ledger movements, balances, interest, fees, overdrafts, limits, product configuration, financial representation and account servicing. 
• Strong Business Analysis capability, including business process modelling, data modelling, API specifications (Swagger/OpenAPI), and requirements management. 
• Experience delivering technology change within highly regulated environments. 
• Strong knowledge of Agile product delivery, product lifecycle management, DevSecOps, and continuous delivery practices. 
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, negotiation, and influencing skills. 
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and manage complex dependencies within a matrix organisation. 
• Strong analytical, strategic thinking, and decision-making skills. 

Personal, Behavioural & Cultural Expectations 

• Client and colleague outcome focused, with a strong commitment to delivering measurable business value while maintaining control, resilience and service quality. 
• Demonstrates strategic thinking, sound judgement and resilience when managing ambiguity, complexity and competing priorities. 
• Builds trusted relationships through collaboration, emotional intelligence, transparency and effective communication. 
• Leads through influence, empowering teams and fostering accountability in a matrix environment. 
• Champions innovation, continuous improvement and a culture of learning and knowledge sharing. 
• Acts with integrity, professionalism and a strong commitment to governance, risk management, financial control and operational excellence. 
• Comfortable challenging the status quo while remaining pragmatic, delivery focused and commercially aware.