Senior Tax Manager: Insurance at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• Role entails preparation of accurate tax technical, policy and process documents and providing solutions to any tax-related issues that arise as well as being a trusted advisor to senior management mainly within the short and long-term insurance businesses. Responsible for identifying and mitigating risk, escalating any relevant issues to Stakeholders (i.e. the Board, shareholders, CFO, finance and business teams), providing tax solutions that are aligned to commercial activities and proactively identifying tax efficiencies. Considering the tax implications associated with transactions to enable business strategy, nimble business decisions and growth.

Job Description

Relationships and Stakeholder Management:

• Building strong relationships with all relevant internal and external stakeholders, including Group Finance, Risk & Compliance, Legal, Group Tax, Industry Bodies, Revenue Authorities as well as Auditors (internal and external)
• Build relationships and interact with external subject-matter experts with the aim of managing tax risk, implementing best practice, identifying tax efficiencies
• Helping to build appropriate awareness, capabilities and sense of ownership with colleagues across the business impacted by tax considerations;
• Managing Revenue Authority relationships and any associated voluntary submissions or enquiries

Tax Risk Management:

• Identifying, recording, measuring, and reporting specific Tax Risk issues as and when they arise, identifying mitigations and implementing them on a risk-prioritized basis
• Developing risk awareness throughout the business to reduce Compliance Risk
• Providing support in the maintenance of robust controls and governance for all tax processes

Tax Advisory:

• Manage compliance with tax laws in all aspects of business transactions or activities
• Provide tax planning and review of complex transactions or business activities
• Achieving optimization by identifying areas of tax savings and integration of tax planning initiatives into business transactions and/activities
• Manage and coordinate tax audits
• Prepare all tax papers on a regular basis and handle all information data requests
• Provide leadership with respect to tax planning, compliance, and control
• New and existing product evaluation to determine taxation impact on… and advise on taxation optimization
• Monitor current and impending legislative and regulatory tax law developments, communicating the impact of these developments to management
• Providing technical tax support to different areas of the business

Tax Compliance:

• Facilitate and provide oversight on tax provision and compliance process as well as timely delivery of these objectives
• Facilitate and provide oversight in ensuring that the tax financial reporting, calculation, and reconciliation processes are performed
• Reviewing corporate tax annual statutory reporting disclosures for all companies within the scope of responsibility
• Providing support in ensuring that the external compliance tax reporting and associated reconciliations are undertaken accurately
• Monitoring and reviewing strategies, policies, and processes relating to the role with a view to managing the implementation of improvements to increase efficiency where possible

Innovation:

• Identify tax technology needs, including opportunities for process improvements, automation, efficiency gains, and application of tax process and technology best practices via the use of existing technology and the implementation of new technology
• Improve processes by developing or implementing best practice

Qualifications and experience required:

• Bachelor of Commerce / LLB
• Postgraduate qualification in Tax
• Minimum of 7 to 10 years’ experience in Insurance Tax (Long and Short-Term) and General Corporate Tax is essential
• Tax compliance experience is essential
• Long and short term insurance tax is a must

Education

• Postgraduate Degrees and Professional Qualifications: Financial Sciences (Required)