Senior Manager: Credit Risk and Dealer Health at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• To ensure understanding of individual Dealer and Dealer Group risk and performance including floorplans to enable differentiated credit and pricing strategy
• To collaborate with the Acquisitions Strategy Managers (within AVAF and Ford Credit JV) and the Pricing Manager to set and monitor acquisition and pricing strategy at a granular level to optimize economic value with the constraints of the agreed Risk appetite.

Job Description

Accountability: Strategy Design and Analysis

• Develop and manage data driven strategies within the Retail Risk team. This includes the following actions:
• Design and development of data driven strategies within the Retail Risk team
• Sourcing, consolidating and analyzing large data sets, utilizing strong SAS skills and identifying anomalies/trends.
• Liaising with relevant stakeholders, including Sales, IT, Front end & Collections Operations, Strategy & Product, Strategic Alliances, Fraud prevention, Finance and other Risk teams.
• Assist New Product Development with assessments related to product refinements.
• Identifying gaps in Acquisitions, Pricing, Portfolio Management and Collections & Recoveries processes and strategies as well as providing solutions to closing the gaps/streamlining processes.
• Design, implement and monitor champion/challenger tests and analyze the test results in order to better understand customer sensitivity in a manner that allows for the long-term strategy to be implemented.
• Presentation of analytical results and proposals to both technical and non-technical audiences, providing commentary as required.
• Your ability to display strategic risk experience as well as solid SAS/Data Analytics skills will serve you well in this role. A strong quantitative, statistics and/or actuarial background with a track record of running with an entire project from
• conceptualization, extraction of data, formulating strategies and subsequent impacts of implementation through to excellent stakeholder engagement and management will be an added advantage.
• Implementation and testing of credit policy and pricing enhancements in a live environment.

Accountability: MI and Communication

• Review and report strategy performance and trends to the CRO: AVAF, Credit Risk Committee, Group Risk teams, and Avaf Business unit Teams. 
• Produce strategy review documentation that shows the relevant performance of comparative acquisition and existing customer strategies. This needs to include approval rate, volume and risk-related metrics. 
• Acting at a granular level (with OEM alliances, Dealer and Dealer Groups), actively manage and improve the risk-based profitability of the new applications as measured in terms of Profit after regulatory cost of capital (PARCC) or economic profit (EP).
• Communicate analytical results to both technical and non-technical audiences 
• Work together with cross functional teams, which may be geographically dispersed, to deliver risk initiatives 
• Manage strategy sign-off process to ensure that all stakeholders are informed of proposed strategy changes and benefit/impact of these changes to the business. 
• Liaise with operational areas (for example, inbound call center managers and the manual risk underwriting teams) to ensure strategies are working optimally. 
• Ensure that all strategies comply with ABSA credit risk policies and framework 

Accountability: Customer Complaints Management

• Investigate and resolve all unresolved customer complaints that are escalated for final decisioning. Provide prompt and clear feedback to the source of the complaint. This needs to be done for both new acquisitions as well as existing customer complaints. 

Accountability: Change Management

• Serve as Product Owner and joint custodian for the AVAF Credit ideation, prioritization and delivery of both strategic initiatives and small/medium enhancements (BOW).
• Accountability: Operational Risk
• Serve as joint liaison to address operational risk matters and internal, and external point of contact with auditor/assurance teams.

Education & experience required

• B Degree in Business or Mathematics or Statistics or Operational Research or Engineering or Risk Management or Finance or similar
• 5 years’ experience in credit risk analysis. 
• 5 years’ experience in developing data driven analytical strategies in the financial service industry. 
• 5 years SAS exposure/experience and appreciation (or other programming language). 
• 3 years in-depth knowledge of the credit tools and systems used. 
• 5 years’ experience in financial service industry. 
• 3 years’ experience with Acquisitions.

Education

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