Lead: Wealth, Investments & Properties Tax at Old Mutual South Africa

Job Description

As part of the Old Mutual Limited Group Central Tax team (Group Tax), this senior role will lead a small team of specialized tax professionals, overseeing the tax affairs of the Wealth, Investments & Properties (WIP) Cluster at Old Mutual Limited.

• Broadly, as part of the WIP team, the role has direct responsibility for the taxation of investment transactions, while also supporting the asset management (including property portfolio) and wealth management businesses. 
• In this role, the successful candidate will work as part of a wider team to ensure that tax risks in the investments, asset management and wealth businesses are identified, well understood and managed pro-actively. 
• The purpose of the Old Mutual Limited Group Tax team, in addition to managing tax risk inherent in the business, is to provide expert knowledge to support decision-making and to ensure that the Group effectively and efficiently integrates tax into business processes and reporting. 
• The team is proud to lead the Group to communicate its tax contribution in a transparent manner. The role offers a challenging blend of strategic input and governance, technical comprehension business knowledge and relationship building (within Old Mutual Group and external stakeholders), while leading with influence and executing conscientiously.
• This role reports to the Head: Wealth, Investments & Properties Tax, based in Cape Town.

Key Result Areas / Outputs

Effective and accountable leadership is essential, by living Old Mutual’s values in an executive management role:

• The experience and proven ability to take commercial decisions using sound judgement, a strong work ethic and irreproachable integrity.
• Proven ability to engage, collaborate and partner with different stakeholders in order to successfully derive adequate commercial solutions for complex business challenges/transactions.
• Resilience essential in a dynamic and demanding environment.
• A track record of building strong, sustainable teams by mentoring, motivating, and leading talented professionals, and actively supporting individual career growth, while setting up the team for succession.
• Leading by example to cultivate a culture of output-driven, solution-orientated, high-performance, teamwork. In this way, encouraging high levels of employee confidence and work satisfaction.
• Lateral-thinking, innovative mindset and strong drive to persevere to deliver results and continuously improve towards a benchmark of excellence.
• Effective team resource capacity management to perform productively and efficiently.
• Building and maintaining relationships to ensure tax representation - for example, at investment origination forums, product and risk committees and meeting of financial managers - to facilitate strategic tax input in investment assessment, product design and financial decision-making processes.
• Maintaining strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders (for example, internal Legal, Risk and Governance teams, external tax subject matter experts, Senior Counsel, Industry bodies, South African Revenue Service teams and National Treasury, amongst others).
• Implementing necessary protocols, procedures and agreements to integrate and align tax sign-off processes within parameters set to manage risk.
• Identifying opportunities for improvement, standardization and automation of tax processes and systems.
• Strategic input into the Group Tax Risk strategy and approach to tax de-risking and mitigation/management of tax risk.

Strong tax technical and commercial experience:

Taxation Law

• Display strong, deep knowledge of tax legislation (tax statutory, regulatory and common-law rules), changes to tax legislation and interpretations or practices.
• Proven ability to constructively engage on technical matters with external stakeholders (ASISA, SAICA, SARS and National Treasury etc.) including participation on industry committees on tax legislation, tax practice and national tax strategy, and participate in and influence policy formation.
• Effective communication of tax technical and compliance updates and derive fit-for-purpose training and support to stakeholders/business units to conduct impact assessments and implement changes to tax legislation.
• Simplify complexity and effectively explain in simple language, the application of tax legislation to unusual and complex business transactions so that strategic decision-making is supported.
• Implement and monitor processes, controls and governance protocols in response to changes in tax legislation while identifying potential tax risks and providing strategic direction to the business.

Taxation Statutory Returns & Dispute Resolution

• A pragmatic approach to the application of tax technical knowledge in the preparation and review of statutory returns across tax types to ensure accuracy, completeness and compliance with statutory obligations.
• Monitor levels of compliance across the business cluster and drive compliance to due dates.
• Instinctively drive the review of assessments to validate differences between tax returns submitted and assessments and take the appropriate action to resolve disputes successfully.

Tax Reporting

• Strong numeracy and literacy skills and the ability to apply tax technical knowledge to ensure complete and accurate accounting and reporting of the tax consequences of transactions concluded during the year in the annual financial statements of affected entities, including deferred tax, effective tax rate reconciliations, provisions for uncertain tax positions, notes the financial statements, etc.
• Strong understanding of the tax accounting standards in order to resolve unusual and complex tax accounting and reporting matters in accordance with applicable accounting standards and tax laws.
• Recommend and advise on process improvements to tax accounting and reporting processes.
• Identify matters of significance to report all necessary matters succinctly ahead of Quarterly Business Reviews, Segment Reviews, Audit Committee Meetings, Governance and Risk Committee Meetings, etc.

Tax Advisory

• Analysis of components of structures, transactions and new products and recommendations to enhance/comply with tax laws. Anticipate tax changes to ensure suitable (sustainable) tax advice. (Examples include, financial structured investments/divestments, products including preference share funding/hybrid instruments, derivative transactions, Group restructures/mergers and acquisitions, Fund (regulated and non-regulated) structuring, offshore expansions, tax due diligences and projects).
• Ahead of tax changes and with all tax advisory work, drive impact assessment, planning and direct implementation steps to ensure timely consideration.
• Thought leadership and strategic guidance on all tax matters (including responses to proposed tax changes, responses to SARS/National Treasury etc).

Requirements:

• Qualified Chartered Accountant (CA(SA)), with Higher Diploma in Taxation or Honours in Tax or Masters in Tax
• Strong (min 5 years) tax experience in a financial services/ insurance environment (insurers and/or banks) or professional services environment
• A track record of tax risk management/oversight plus management of teams.
• Experience with transformation of tax functions (people, process, data, technology) would be a distinct advantage
• Strong relationships with key stakeholders in general (eg SARS, National Treasury, etc)

Personal Attributes

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Resilience. Ability to perform under pressure,
• Strong inter-personal skills (interact, work with and manage diverse teams)
• Lateral thinking ability. Strong forward-thinking/creativity and analytical skills
• Pragmatic and numerate
• Logical thought processes and critical thinking skills resulting in sound judgment at an enterprise level
• Decision-making abilities.

Core Competencies

• Resilience
• Maturity
• High performance
• Ownership/Taking Initiative/Continuous Improvement mindset
• Execution/A bias towards results
• Collaboration/Teamwork/Relationships
• Lateral thinking (Perspective)
• Leading with Influence
• Personal Mastery (Playing to strengths)
• Strategic mindset