Current Openings at Discovery Limited

Key purpose of the role

As an IFRS specialist within Group IFRS Technical, you will assist with the implementation of IFRS Accounting Standards across the Discovery Group of entities. 

This includes delivering on:

• Implement transactions consistent with IFRS Accounting Standards and co-designing accounting solutions to drive compliance with IFRS Accounting Standards in working with the Group Financial Reporting team.
• Discovery businesses in the assessment of new IFRS Accounting Standards, accounting for transactions according to IFRS Accounting Standards, the development of accounting policies and manuals to assist in the consistent application of IFRS Accounting Standards in Discovery, training on IFRS Accounting Standards, and assisting in preparation of financial statements in compliance with IFRS Accounting Standards.
• Liaise with Stakeholders
• Prepare and present papers to the Discovery Accounting Practices Committee, Audit Committee and/ or Regulator.
• Liaise with external auditors, specifically on IFRS Accounting Standards related queries and Financial Statements presentation and disclosures.
• Assist with communication to the JSE Limited, Equity and Debt Sponsors.
• Participate in industry forums.

Areas of responsibility

• Preparation and Review of Annual Financial Statements
• Assist in drafting the Discovery Group Financial Statements in line with IFRS Accounting Standards, Companies Act, JSE regulations, and best practices.
• Review subsidiary financial statements and provide guidance and recommendations on disclosures in accordance with IFRS Accounting Standards and Companies Act.
• Create and share relevant reporting frameworks and templates for use in business, including financial statement templates and reporting pack templates 
• Development of IFRS disclosures for new IFRS Accounting Standards or interpretations.
• New or amended IFRS Accounting Standards:
• Stay abreast of IFRS and public reporting developments and pro-actively expand and deepen your practical understanding and application of IFRS Accounting Standards and ensure knowledge transfer to the larger finance teams.
• Research impact of new and amended accounting standards on Discovery Group transactions.
• Oversee implementation of new accounting standards across the Discovery Group (initiation, planning, execution, and monitoring
• IFRS Accounting Standards interpretation and application across the Discovery Group
• Assist with the facilitation of the Discovery Accounting Practices Committee, which reviews new transactions and consistent application of IFRS across the Discovery Group of entities.
• Address accounting queries on IFRS Accounting Standards.
• Writing accounting opinions and position papers, including policy documents and manuals. This includes the accounting implications pre and post deals, as well as at a separate financial statement view and consolidated financial statement view.
• Present training on IFRS Accounting Standards to finance teams
• Liaise with Stakeholders
• Prepare and present papers to the Audit Committee and/ or Regulator.
• Liaise with external auditors, specifically on IFRS Accounting Standard queries and Financial Statement queries
• Assist with communication to the JSE and Sponsors.
• Participate in industry forums.
• Support the investor relations team with technical queries on results and other ad hoc requests
• Stay abreast of IFRS and public reporting developments and pro-actively expand and deepen your practical understanding and application of IFRS and ensure knowledge transfer to the larger finance teams
• Assist in the planning and running of the annual audit.

Profile

• Self-management skills
• Advanced knowledge and application of IFRS Accounting Standards
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Impeccable attention to detail and accuracy
• Ability to work well under pressure
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Strong project management skills
• Advanced Excel knowledge and experience

Qualifications

• The candidate should be a qualified CA (SA) with a minimum of 3 years of experience in a similar role. Job level will consider years of experience in similar roles. Experience within financial services and JSE-listed entities is advantageous.

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Key Purpose

• Design, code, test, debug and correct program modules in development for the back-end service providers. Construct robust, maintainable, scalable, optimally performing system code in line with technical specifications, following prescribed process, standards and procedures. Work with the system architect/analyst to define the system design and then develop and test the necessary code that will be deployed.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to:

• Design
• Translate business requirements into technical designs adhering to VitalityHealth processes, standards and guidelines, taking cognisance of performance, security and scalability requirements. Deliver within agreed timeframes.
• Liaise with relevant parties where clarification of business requirements or resolution to technical issues is needed
• Research and find effective solutions to technical issues that arise
• Estimate development timelines based on business requirements
• Development
• Construct robust, maintainable, scalable, optimally performing system code in line with technical specifications, following prescribed process, standards and procedures. Deliver within agreed timeframes
• Conduct unit testing and fix any defects found
• Testing
• Verify build stability and quality with development team before releasing to test team, aiming to release with zero defects
• Assist the Business analyst in ensuring the test pack includes relevant scenarios and test data.
• Consult and assist in reviewing risk / impact of defects found in testing, and assist with fixing where necessary
• Support / Troubleshooting
• Assist system users with technical support issues and handle according to defined procedures
• Ability to effectively analyse root cause of system errors (data errors, performance and stability issues)
• Personal development
• Keep abreast of current technological trends and how these might be applied in the Discovery environment
• Constant improvement of knowledge of the various applications, their functionalities and data models
• General
• Ability to communicate clearly, constructively and effectively. Easily able to follow and participate in technical, business process, and other discussions
• Able to build business relationships with other members of team and the business areas we support

Personal Attributes and Skills

Behavioral competencies

• Drives Results
• Values Driven
• Optimistic
• Learns on the Fly
• Resilient
• Instils Trust
• People Savvy
• Drives Results
• Problem Solver
• Leadership Skills
• Strategic Agility
• Manages complexity
• Balances Stakeholder

Technical Skills

Required:

• Java 6,7 & 8 /J2EE Pattern knowledge
• Databases – Oracle, PL/SQL,PostGres
• Frameworks – Hibernate, JPA, SpringBoot, JBoss Seam
• Test Tools – TDD, JUnit, Mockito
• Code repository – GIT, BITBUCKET
• Front-end framework – JSF
• Build tools/Dependency – Maven, Ant
• Web Services – REST and SOAP
• Application Servers – JBoss Application Server (EAP7)

Nice to have:

• Experience with Tibco EMS queues
• Linux command line
• DevOps/CI tools (Jenkins, SonarQube, etc.)
• Automated testing Framework – Jmeter
• Containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, etc.)
• Experience with Kafka
• Monitoring/reporting tools (Splunk, Dynatrace, etc.)

Education and Experience
Education

• Matric
• A Bachelor’s Degree or Diploma in Computer Sciences/ Information Systems or equivalent IT tertiary qualification or Formal Java Qualification

Knowledge

• Knowledge of commonly used design patterns
• Excellent understanding of Object Orientated principals and Java language fundamentals
• Working knowledge of Software development within SDLC, Unit Testing, Data modelling and design of database structures
• Agile Methodology

Experience

• A minimum of 3 or more years Java systems development experience with exposure to core
• Java EE knowledge and experience

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Job Description

• Identifying sales opportunities.
• Answering inbound calls timeously and making required outbound calls
• Co-ordination of own administration
• Identifying sales opportunities
• Maintaining accurate details and statistics of all queries

Key purpose

• This position is based in the Discovery Connect Sales call centre, and reports to the sales team leader. The successful individual will be required to conduct Discovery Health telesales.

Key Outputs

The successful individual will be required to perform on, but not limited to the following key outputs:

•  Achieve Health Sales target
• Communication to members telephonically via fax and email
• Attending to general administration
• Conduct Financial Needs Analysis
•  Achieve quality target
• Overcome objections
• Adhering to service level agreements

Personal attributes and skills

The successful individual will be required to demonstrate the following competencies:

• Target Driven
• Team Player
• Goal orientated
• Self motivated
• Ability to perform under pressure
• Adapt to change
• Persuasiveness
• Resilience/Tenacity
• Sound Time Management
• Self managed
• Attention to detail
• Ability to learn quickly and apply knowledge
• Speak fluently (accent neutral) English/Afrikaans

Qualification & Experience

• Matric
•  At least 1year sales experience, preferably in an outbound telesales environment
• Minimum 1 year health product knowledge, Discovery Health Knowledge is an advantage
•  PC literacy, email, word, excel
• Tertiary qualification an advantage
• NQF5 and RE5 qualification

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Key Purpose

• The Data Science Lab is a highly specialised and expanding team that tackles challenges in the health, life, and short-term insurance businesses, as well projects that cut across the whole of the Discovery Group. We are looking for individuals with 2-5 years of experience, for projects related to:
•  risk management through behavioural science and intervention (next best action) design 
• combining traditional data (eg: wearable device, web & app logs, health & life insurance claims) with novel data sources in new ways
• assisting with experimental design for product, rewards, marketing, communications, engagement etc
• advising partner markets on how to customise and deploy locally built models
• They will have the opportunity to work with cutting edge technology and advanced techniques to see their models used in real business applications. The innovative work environment means there are opportunities to shape new projects with a focus on helping insurance customers to lead healthier lives. 

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to

• Identify and build appropriate models to predict risk, sales and savings
• Present data insights and model findings in a way that provides actionable insights for business stakeholders and senior executives
• Mining and visualising large structured and unstructured datasets throughout the businesses to inform product design, risk management, customer interaction strategies, etc.
• Following model implementations through to business adoption
• Monitoring model performance and using feedback for improvement
• Improving processes and data collections where opportunities arise
• Running scientific experiments to evaluate different models in a reproducible way
• Produce analytical work that is customer, business and staff focused

Personal Attributes and Skills  

• A creative and enthusiastic attitude to unearthing valuable insights and generating value for Discovery clients 
• Ability to balance multiple priorities and to step back and see how analytics work fits into the wider business context 
• Results driven, curious and able to work autonomously or within teams
• Good time and task management skills
• Ability to communicate results of analyses in a clear and effective manner
• Aligned to Discovery values and core purpose 

Education and Experience

• Master’s or PhD degree in either Data Science, Actuarial Science, Statistics, Operations Research, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics or Engineering fields.
• Ability to formulate a clear problem statement, develop a plan for tackling it, and clearly communicate findings verbally, visually, and in writing 
• Demonstrable working experience in an analytics position, where the focus was on building and implementing machine learning models to solve business problems
• Experience accessing and analysing data using language/tools/databases such as Python, R, SQL, etc.
• Experience using Gradient Boosting Machines, Random Forests, Neural Networks or similar algorithms.
• Good knowledge of Microsoft Office tools.

Advantageous:

• Some experience in working with big disparate sets of data and exposure to big data tools
• The ideal candidate will possess a deep interest in the healthcare industry, particularly in leveraging behavioral science to promote disease management and prevention. Additionally, they should demonstrate a strong understanding of strategic risk management principles and their application across the healthcare value chain.

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Job Purpose

• The Service Specialist for IT disaster recovery, capacity and reporting role is to provide assurance for the service continuity and capacity of Discovery Bank’s IT infrastructure. This involves formulating and maintaining the policies procedures and practices for disaster recovery and capacity management and performing the necessary configuration and data collection, analysis, verification, and modelling to ensure continuity and performance of Bank systems in line with applicable policies.  The role specifically includes maintenance of disaster recovery plans and scheduling and facilitation of disaster recovery and resilience testing and execution in the event of a declared disaster.

Areas of responsibility may include but are not limited to

• Process
• IT Disaster Recovery
• Develop, maintain, and enhance disaster recovery plans.
• Manage the introduction of new infrastructure and systems in line with recoverability design standards.
• Schedule and facilitate disaster recovery and component resilience testing.
• Report test results and track remedial activities.
• Capacity management
• Develop, maintain, and enhance the procedures for capacity management of key technologies (storage, network, processor, memory etc.)
• Manage the routine aggregation of system performance and capacity-related data feeds.
• Model and forecast capacity demand.
• Facilitation of tracking of business system and project-related capacity demands.
• Provide actionable analysis and data to internal support groups.
• Operational and governance reporting
• Develop, maintain, and enhance the procedures for the required reporting obligation into mandated governance forums. [and producing the reports]
• Collate, transform, aggregate and store data from relevant sources to produce history reporting with forecast and trending of key performance metrics.  This extends to all key metrics for IT Infrastructure.
• Leadership and teamwork
• Work with internal colleagues to ensure they have the appropriate information and knowledge at hand to be successful in what they do.
• Facilitate and guide activities involving cross-functional teams to achieve outputs and objectives.
• Provide periodic reports on performance against plan & progress on medium-term initiatives & use to realign operating plan and objectives appropriately.
• Proactively identify interconnected problems, develop and model alternative solutions as well as contingency plans.
• Continuously identify areas of improvement that will enhance efficiency.
• GOVERNANCE
• Ensure the consolidation of the risk profile for the area of accountability, manage critical risks, and provide timely reporting and feedback.
• PEOPLE
• Communicate strategic context that guide best practice, foster an environment of continuous learning and improved employee engagement levels.
• CLIENT
• Define and influence relationships made with internal and external stakeholders.
• Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders to ensure integrated approaches in pursuit of collective goals.

Personal Attributes and Skills

• Strong knowledge of IT Infrastructure technologies with specific knowledge of techniques and practices for infrastructure and system resilience, continuity, and recovery.
• Strong knowledge and interpretation of IT capacity and performance metrics, collection, and aggregation.
• Data analysis and modelling
• Knowledge of IT Service Management processes
• Ability to engage at all levels of seniority (including Executive Management)
• Decisiveness and Influencing Others
• Effective Business Communication
• Functional Policies and Procedures
• Strategic Planning and Reporting.
• Ability to carry out assigned tasks independently with little supervision.

Education and Experience

• Relevant Tertiary Qualification
• At least 8 years’ experience in IT technical management, disaster recovery planning and testing.
• Solid experience in compiling of reports and presentation,
• Formal certification is disaster recovery / business continuity management would be advantageous.
• IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) certification

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Key Purpose 

• The professional assistant's duties will be to provide administrative support and services to the Company Secretariat.

 Areas of responsibility may include but not limited 

• Secretarial 
• Providing ongoing support for the Group Company Secretary, the Company Secretariat Team and stakeholders associated with the Company Secretariat 
• Providing support for Boards, meetings, committees etc
• Providing support for activities which are logically carried out by a Group Secretariat.
• Providing support on administrative tasks as required by the Company Secretariat
• Supporting the team in the preparation of agendas and other meeting papers for the Board and its Committees (including designated Subsidiaries).
• Assisting in the preparation of  meeting packs for the Board and its Committees (including designated Subsidiaries)
• Scheduling meetings: Room bookings, set up, and related document preparation 
• Diary and email management 
• Effectively deal with internal and external escalated queries the same day 
• Collecting and returning visitors to the reception area 
• Continuously build and maintain professional relationships with internal and external clients
•   Office Management 
• Logging of TI & Group Facilities calls 
• Assisting with Function & Event co- ordination for Team  
• Run and distribute telephone reports and monitor related costs 
• Ordering from procurement 
• Serve as point of contact relating to reporting of repairs due 
• Procurement for cost center, place order with supplier, arrange for order number to be generated, arrange approval, receipt of original invoice and send to finance for payment.  
• Petty cash capturing for the division  
• Administration of staff training bookings and training budget 
• Adhoc 
• The person in this role will handle adhoc functions and projects which is not limited to the above.  
• The person would support all members of the Company Secretariat and the related stakeholders.                                                                                    

Personal Attributes and Skills 

• Excellent communication and comprehension 
• Appropriately follows instructions 
• Works productively in a high-pressure environment 
• Upholds ethics and values. 

Education and Experience 

• Tertiary Qualification
• 5 years working experience as a PA at Senior Management level 
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills  
• Proficient in MS office at an intermediate level (Ms Word, Ms Excel, Power Point, Outlook)  
• Experience in the Company Secretariat environment would be advantageous