Senior Specialist: Research and Competitor Analysis at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Description

KEY FOCUS AREAS

• Lead competitor and market research to inform Business Banking strategy and positioning.
• Develop frameworks for tracking industry trends, customer behaviour, and market shifts.
• Deliver structured insights to support product, pricing, and channel decisions.
• Benchmark Business Banking’s performance against competitors and market standards.
• Collaborate with marketing, product, and strategy teams to align insights with execution.
• Build and manage research dashboards and reporting tools.
• Translate complex data into clear, actionable recommendations.
• Support executive decision-making through strategic intelligence.
• Monitor emerging risks and opportunities in the competitive landscape.
• Foster a culture of insight-led innovation and continuous improvement.

ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Strategy Formulation and Execution
• Contribute to strategic planning, product development, and go-to-market strategies.
• Develop and implement a competitor intelligence strategy aligned to Business Banking priorities.
• Translate market insights into strategic recommendations for business growth
• Analyse competitor strategies, product offerings, pricing models, and customer engagement tactics and provide insights to position the bank competitively
• Market Intelligence Gathering: identify trends in business banking (e.g., SME lending, digital banking, fintech disruption).
• Monitor macroeconomic indicators and regulatory changes affecting business clients.
• Benchmark performance and innovation across key competitors.
• Customer & Segment Insights: Research business customer needs across segments (e.g., SMEs, corporates). Identify underserved niches or emerging demands.
• Strategic Recommendations: Provide actionable insights to inform product development, pricing, and go-to-market strategies. Advise leadership on strategic positioning and differentiation opportunities.
• Scenario Planning & Forecasting: Model potential market shifts and competitor moves. Support strategic planning with predictive insights and risk assessments.
• Respond to emerging policy and regulatory trends by adapting operational strategy and ensuring compliance alignment.
• Track execution progress against key strategic initiatives and intervene to correct course where needed.
• Provide expert advice and support in operating model, strategy, and value chain formulation and delivery alignment.
• Identify practices and technologies that provide competitive advantage and enable knowledge sharing and integration of practice areas.
• Undertake analysis of management and specialist information and guide reporting tool implementation to improve decision-making quality.

Customer Primacy

• Identify unmet customer needs: through market and competitor research, uncover gaps in current offerings, helping to shape products and services that better serve business clients.
• Customer-centric benchmarking: evaluate how competitors are serving customers—pricing, digital tools, service models. Recommend improvements to ensure the bank delivers superior value and experience.
• Voice of the Customer in strategy: Integrate customer feedback and sentiment analysis into strategic planning.
• Ensure that customer pain points and expectations are reflected in business decisions.
• Analyze customer behaviour and preferences to inform segmentation and targeting.
• Use research insights to enhance customer value propositions and experience design.
• Interpret market and customer insights to inform operational plans and prioritise capability investments.
• Utilise customer data to improve processes and propositions, ensuring measurable customer value delivery.
• Represent the voice of the customer within leadership forums to influence service delivery priorities.
• Provide expertise in designing integrated frameworks to embed service excellence.

Sustainable Growth

• Identify growth opportunities through market gap analysis and competitor benchmarking.
• Support strategic planning with data-driven forecasts and performance comparisons.
• Long-Term Market trend analysis: identify emerging sectors, technologies, and business models that will shape future banking needs. Advise on strategic investments and partnerships that support long-term relevance.
• Sustainable Competitive Positioning: benchmark competitors not just on performance, but on sustainability practices (e.g., green financing, ESG integration). Recommend differentiation strategies that align with responsible banking.
• Customer Lifecycle Insights: analyzes customer retention, churn, and lifetime value to inform sustainable growth strategies. Support development of solutions that evolve with customer needs over time.
• Risk & Resilience Forecasting: identify systemic risks (economic, environmental, regulatory) that could impact growth. Support scenario planning to build resilience into strategic plans.
• Data-Driven Decision Support: Provide insights that help prioritize high-potential, low-risk growth opportunities. Ensure decisions are backed by robust market and competitor intelligence.
• Sustainability Metrics Tracking: Monitor industry benchmarks for ESG performance and sustainable finance. Track internal progress against sustainability goals and market expectations.
• Innovation Enablement: Identify gaps in current offerings where innovation can drive sustainable differentiation. Support product teams with insights into future-ready solutions (e.g., digital lending, carbon accounting tools).
• Stakeholder Engagement: Equip leadership with insights to engage regulators, investors, and customers on sustainability. Help align internal teams around shared growth and sustainability goals.
• Formulate and develop multi-function operating frameworks that contribute to sustainable growth.

Client-Driven Innovation and Change

• Competitor Innovation Benchmarking: analyze how competitors are innovating—new products, digital platforms, customer engagement tools. Provide insights to inspire internal innovation and avoid falling behind.
• Customer-Centric Innovation: Surface unmet needs and evolving expectations of business clients. Support development of new solutions (e.g., ESG-linked loans, real-time cash flow tools) that create value.
• Idea Incubation Support: Contribute research and validation to innovation labs or product development teams. Help prioritize ideas based on market demand and competitive advantage.
• Scan the external environment to investigate alternative delivery models and offer innovative advice for competitive advantage.
• Drive change management activities across a single value chain for optimal adoption of change.

Leading Talent

• Build research and analytics capability within the team – provide thought leadership in field of specialization.
• Foster a culture of creativity, accountability, customer obsession, collaboration and continuous improvement.
• Create inclusive team environments that support performance, wellbeing, and growth.
• Develop future capability in the field through providing mentorship to interested colleagues.

Operational Effectiveness

• Develop and maintain research processes, tools, and reporting standards.
• Informed Decision-Making: provide accurate, timely market and competitor insights to enhance data-led decision-making.
• Process Optimization Support: identify inefficiencies in how the bank responds to market or competitor changes. Recommend streamlined processes for intelligence gathering, reporting, and action.
• Resource Allocation Efficiency: Help leadership focus resources (people, budget, time) on high-impact areas.
• Avoid duplication of efforts by centralizing and sharing intelligence across teams.
• Performance Benchmarking: Track operational KPIs against competitors (e.g., turnaround times, digital adoption rates), highlighting areas where internal processes lag behind industry standards.
• Cross-Functional Enablement: Equip teams (e.g., product, sales, risk) with insights that improve their day-to-day operations.
• Enhance collaboration by aligning teams around shared market intelligence.
• Early Warning Systems: monitor market shifts and competitor moves that could disrupt operations. Enable proactive adjustments to strategy, staffing, or service delivery.
• Represent the business area in operational forums and with delivery partners.
• Continuously improve processes for agility, quality, and alignment with customer needs and digital tools.
• Identify problems and formulate alternate solutions to resolve value chain conflicts.
• Provide expert advice on operating model, strategy, value chain formulation, and business controls/governance frameworks.

Digital Adoption

• Leverage digital platforms and tools for data collection, analysis, and visualization.
• Promote automation and digitization of research workflows.
• Execute digital initiatives and promote adoption of technologies that improve efficiency and user experience.
• Monitor digital platform performance and ensure integration with business processes and outcomes.
• Deliberately identify opportunities to digitise, automate, and implement solutions for customer primacy, innovation, and operational effectiveness.

Good Governance, Risk and Compliance

• Ensure ethical and compliant data sourcing and usage.
• Monitor reputational and strategic risks through competitor intelligence.
• Promote risk awareness, guide the response to regulatory changes and emerging issues and support audit readiness activities.
• Define and consolidate the risk profile for the business unit, manage critical risks, and ensure resolution feedback to stakeholders.
• Enable the development and implementation of integrated corporate governance frameworks in areas of specialisation.

Data Monetisation

• Transform research data insights into revenue-generating strategies and operational efficiencies that inform business decisions.
• Build dashboards and models that unlock value from internal and external data.
• Apply data insights to support business planning and decision-making in the business area.
• Develop mechanisms to ensure data is collected, validated, and used to drive performance improvement.
• Oversee the explicit use of data and its inherent value to explore opportunities and guide decisions.

Stakeholder Management

• Engage with internal stakeholders to align research outputs with business needs.
• Present insights to senior leadership and influence strategic direction.
• Manage relationships with key stakeholders to support aligned delivery and issue resolution.
• Ensure stakeholder expectations are managed and engagement is consistent with transformation priorities.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

Education/ Qualification:

• Post Graduate Degree: Honours Degree, Post Graduate Diploma and Professional Qualifications [NQF8]

Field of Study:

• Business Strategy, Marketing, Economics, Data Analytics, or related fields.

Work Experience:

• 8 -10 years’ experience in a specific capability of importance to the bank
• Experience must include developing integrated customer-centric product or service solutions or corporate practice development while working with and managing stakeholders across business and/or functional areas and budget management.
• Exposure to digital transformation and data-driven decision-making is preferred.
• Demonstrated success in delivering strategic research and competitor analysis that informs business decisions, drives market positioning, and supports growth initiatives.
• Experience in engaging stakeholders in presenting market intelligence, competitor benchmarking, and strategic insights to influence decision-making and align cross-functional priorities.

COMPETENCIES

• Leadership Competencies:
• Strategic Thinking
• Business Acumen
• Communication
• Influence
• Leadership
• Creativity and Innovation
• Delivering Results
• Adaptability
• Collaboration

Knowledge and Skills:

• Market and competitor analysis
• Qualitative and quantitative research techniques.
• Strategic research frameworks
• Data analytics and visualisation tools
• Benchmarking and performance tracking
• Customer and industry trend analysis
• Insight reporting and storytelling
• Business strategy alignment
• Stakeholder engagement and influence
• Digital research platforms
• Risk and opportunity identification
• undefined

Education

• Postgraduate Degrees and Professional Qualifications: Business, Commerce and Management Studies

End Date: January 5, 2026