Chief Analytics Officer at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• Drive, lead, and oversee the capability of Data Engineering and Analytics by driving the strategic direction and operational execution of data engineering initiatives, ensuring the efficient and effective management, governance, processing, and transformation of data to enable advanced analytics, data-driven decision making, and insights generation.

Job Description

Strategy Formulation and Execution

• Identify strategic role players and stakeholders and engage all stakeholders, role players and industry forums to understand changes to strategy, regulations, and markets.
• Set and communicate a long-term strategy that clearly articulates strategic targets and metrics to align the delivery of the business strategy against the strategic objectives, targets and shareholder expectations.
• Set and oversee the execution of the business strategy, with enablement capability across the Business Unit.
• Support the bank's strategic objectives and contribute to its success in the dynamic and evolving financial landscape.
• Translate the broad business lines strategy to drive the alignment of and integration of strategy across the value chain.
• Develop and implement a comprehensive data engineering strategy that aligns with the bank's overall business objectives and supports data-driven decision-making

Customer Primacy

• Build and sustain a culture that aligns to the customer experience to deliver the target customer experience and financial performance
• Contribute as a key ExCo member to the overall agenda internally and with external stakeholders, ensuring that the business line's agenda is appropriately managed and reported to all requisite stakeholders, in particular the Group ExCo.
• Display, portray, and translate a deep understanding of market shifts and competitive positioning from a capability insights perspective and devise plans that will support prioritisation efforts.
• Provide business insights based on market trends, competitor offerings and global best practices as it relates to the business line

Sustainable Growth

• Influence, integrate and guide but also meet the business growth ambitions.
• Partner with executive bodies (ExCo’s, business lines and functions internally to align on strategic objectives.  Translate objectives into delivery pipeline requirements to ensure insights are appropriate and that adequate business ownership and buy-in are created to realise overall strategy.
• Through delivery and execution, perform an active role with the mandate to increase the business line's overall contribution to Group performance.

Client-Driven Innovation and Change

• Provide input into the overall client experience.
• Stay abreast of industry trends and role players and ensure that business line is well positioned to provide competitive and industry-leading products and services.
• Strategically influence the development of products and services that meet or exceed customer needs and expectations, creating stakeholder value.

Leading Talent

• Accountable for enabling people and culture aligned to brand value.
• Act as a second-level escalation point for all grievances raised in the functional area.
• Determine and analyse attestation, training, and development needs for direct reports, and ensure that these requirements are met.
• Ensure appropriate reward and recognition practices for all employees within the team.
• Ensure that poor performance is addressed, and relevant corrective actions are implemented.

Operational Effectiveness

• Define the business line projects and track and manage the process, understand trends and dynamics.
• Drive strategic reporting requirements.
• Drive the development and tracking of tactical plans and scorecards and take corrective actions where required.
• Orchestrate the necessary process to facilitate regular strategic alignment between Group and the ITO function.
• Provide leadership in engagements with regulatory bodies and represent the area of accountability in key industry associations and forums where applicable.
• Use insights and knowledge gained from high-level reports and analyse complex comparative information to create scenarios to direct strategic intent.
• Foster collaboration and effective stakeholder management by engaging with business stakeholders, data scientists, and other teams to understand their data requirements and provide data engineering support.
• Have the ability to adopt an agile way of working and be able to react fast and bring meaningful solutions to developments within the business line.

Digital Adoption

• Deliberately seek opportunities to digitise, automate and implement solutions for customer primacy, innovation, and operational effectiveness.
• Utilise resources and encourage the use of new technology (software products, apps, websites, etc.) to their fullest potential, and derive maximum value from a digital process or solution.

Good Governance Risk and Compliance

• Drive the development and implementation of integrated corporate governance and compliance frameworks throughout the function.
• Influence the implementation of effective internal controls system and corporate governance in the functional area of accountability.

Data Monetisation

• Consider the explicit use of data and its inherent value to explore opportunities, plan and guide all decisions for execution.
• Use data to obtain quantifiable economic benefit for the area of accountability, leveraging internal or indirect capacity to make measurable business performance improvements and inform decisions accordingly.
• Establish and enforce robust data management practices, including data acquisition, integration, quality, and governance, ensuring data is accurate, reliable, and accessible for analytical purposes.
• Design and maintain scalable and efficient data architectures that support Absa's analytics and reporting needs, enabling seamless data flow and integration across various systems and platforms.
• Implement and manage data pipelines and processes, ensuring timely and accurate data extraction, transformation, and loading for analytics and reporting purposes.
• Enable advanced analytical capabilities by providing the necessary infrastructure, tools, and frameworks for data analysis, modelling, and visualisation, empowering data scientists and analysts to derive valuable insights.
• Manage and optimise data platforms such as data warehouses, data lakes, and other relevant technologies, ensuring high performance, availability, and scalability.
• Establish and enforce data security and privacy measures to protect sensitive information, complying with regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
• Monitor the performance of data engineering processes and systems, identifying and addressing bottlenecks, optimising performance, and ensuring efficient data processing and analytics.
• Stay abreast of emerging technologies and innovations in data engineering, evaluating their potential application within Absa and make recommendations for their adoption to enhance data engineering capabilities.

Minimum Requirements:

• 12 - 15 years’ experience in a specific capability of importance to the bank, including a track record of 5 years in a senior information technology position in a large enterprise.
• Bachelor`s Degrees and/or Advanced Diplomas; Physical, Mathematical, Computer and Life Sciences

Kindly note: The role is based in either Cape Town or Johannesburg

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology (Required)