Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

Formulate and implement transformative programmes to deliver an enhanced competitive market position and sustainable business performance. Provide thought leadership on future-fit products and services by interpreting research and insights and translating these into a holistic customer-centric implementation plan. Monitor implementation of the business unit strategy, including evaluation of new opportunities and ventures.

Job Description

KEY FOCUS AREAS

Lead the formulation and execution of the product house's long-term business strategy in alignment with organisational goals.
Guide annual strategic planning by incorporating input from key stakeholders across product, finance, marketing, and operations.
Monitor performance against strategic targets and recommend pivots or new market strategies using data and trend analysis.
Drive sustainable growth through competitive market positioning and future-focused commercialisation strategies.
Foster innovation by introducing new business models, products, and technology-driven capabilities.
Evaluate strategic partnerships, M&A, and joint ventures to enhance market position and delivery capability.
Oversee the development of KPIs, dashboards, and performance insights to guide business decisions and optimisation.
Enhance operational efficiency through process improvements and resolution of value chain bottlenecks.
Ensure robust governance, internal reporting, and compliance frameworks to support decision-making and execution.
Engage internal stakeholders across CVM, CDAO, Digital, Marketing, and external vendors to align performance delivery.

ACCOUNTABILITIES

Strategy Formulation and Execution

Develop and implement the long-term business strategy for the product house, aligning it with the institution’s overall vision and goals.
Lead the annual strategic planning process, ensuring input from key stakeholders including product, marketing, finance, and operations.
Identify market trends, competitive positioning, and customer insights to inform strategic decision-making.
Drive the execution of key strategic initiatives that contribute to product growth, market expansion, and customer satisfaction.
Monitor the implementation of strategic plans, ensuring alignment with key performance targets.
Translate long-term strategic objectives into aligned business plans, execution roadmaps and key milestone measurements for the business area.
Cascade strategic goals and ensure alignment between business unit vision and functional implementation priorities, setting clear short, medium, and long-term milestones.
Develop effective partnerships to enable business performance and contribute to sector-wide influence aligned with strategic initiatives.
Respond to emerging policy and regulatory trends by adapting operational strategy and ensuring compliance alignment.
Coordinate business enablement efforts for the Retail Bank, ensuring delivery capability across systems, processes, and teams.
Track execution progress against key strategic initiatives and intervene to correct course where needed.
Support transformation initiatives through structured programme delivery and change management practices.
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
Interpret market and customer insights to inform operational plans and prioritize capability investments.
Utilise customer data to improve processes and propositions, ensuring measurable customer value delivery.
Instill customer-centric decision-making in teams, balancing experience, and efficiency targets.
Implement initiatives that improve customer engagement and retention through operational enhancements.
Coordinate cross-functional initiatives to deliver consistent customer journeys and service quality.
Represent the voice of the customer within leadership forums to influence service delivery priorities.
Plan and deliver services that create a culture which aims to exceed customer expectations in all aspects of the business.
Provide expertise in designing integrated frameworks to embed service excellence.

Sustainable Growth

Using extensive market data and trend analytics to co-create a future-focused product commercialisation strategy for current growth and future sustainability.
Work closely with the product team to evaluate the product house’s competitive positioning in the market, identifying opportunities for differentiation and growth.
Use research insights to recommend strategic pivots or new market entry strategies.
Develop business area growth plans aligned to segment and enterprise priorities.
Work with business partners to define and execute on growth strategies and operational initiatives.
Mobilise functional teams to deliver growth targets and embed performance accountability.
Monitor growth delivery, resolving barriers and reinforcing strategic objectives at operational levels.
Evaluate financial and customer returns on initiatives to ensure alignment with business viability.
Formulate and develop multi-function operating frameworks that contribute to sustainable growth.

Client-Driven Innovation and Change

Encourage a culture of innovation within the product house, driving new business models, product offerings, and technology integrations.
Evaluate potential mergers, acquisitions, or joint ventures to enhance the product house’s market positioning and capabilities.
Monitor competitive landscape and identify opportunities to improve products, services, or operations.
Drive continuous improvement and innovation within the team to enhance customer outcomes.
Shape client experience initiatives through project ownership and delivery responsibility.
Lead operational change, ensuring readiness, engagement, and measured impact across delivery teams.
Influence and communicate across all levels of the business to minimise resistance to change and ensure onboarding of target audiences.
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
Embed people processes and values into business routines, reinforcing a strong leadership culture.

Develop workforce capabilities to meet business plan execution requirements and future readiness.
Create inclusive team environments that support performance, wellbeing, and growth.
Address escalated people issues and ensure application of performance and development processes.
Develop future leaders through mentorship, stretch assignments, and tailored development experiences.
Provide expertise and advice in the development and implementation of human capability and accountability frameworks across functions.
Direct the development and implementation of human capability strategies to support people management priorities.

Operational Effectiveness

Identify and implement process improvements to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and increase overall business performance.
Collaborate with operations teams to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, recommending solutions to improve business outcomes, including core sales and retention objectives and digital adoption and customer primacy imperatives.
Develop performance metrics (KPIs) and dashboards to monitor the financial, operational, and strategic health of the product house, integrated with data from relevant departments, including sales, marketing, finance, and operations.
Analyse business performance data, identifying areas for improvement and optimisation.
Operationalise strategic goals into functional plans with clear deliverables, timelines, scorecards with team and individual KPIs to enable effective tracking of business and individual performance.
Set appropriate financial and other resourcing plans to enable business performance, tracking against budgets and investments for both current and long-term strategic goals.
Ensure integration across business units by resolving operational friction and dependencies.
Represent the business area in operational forums and with delivery partners.
Leverage data insights to improve operational effectiveness and customer outcomes.
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

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 that governance frameworks are in place to support effective decision-making and strategic execution.
Prepare reports and presentations for the board, executive committees, and senior leadership on the product house’s performance and strategic progress.
Ensure compliance with corporate governance standards and internal reporting protocols.
Implement governance, risk, and compliance frameworks in business processes and team routines.
Promote risk awareness and lead the response to regulatory changes and emerging issues.
Support audit readiness and ensure operational teams adhere to compliance requirements.
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 specialization.
Influence the implementation of effective internal controls systems and corporate governance practices.

Data Monetisation

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

Drive the engagement of role players across the product value chain including CVM, Marketing, CDAO, Integrated Channels, Third parties and Vendors.
Liaise with and consume services from CVM, CDAO and Digital for the driving and monitoring of performance against set KVDs.
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:

Strategy, Commerce, Business, Economics, or related field

Work Experience:

12-15 years’ experience in a specific capability of importance to the bank, including a track record of 5 years in a people management position in a large enterprise

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

Extensive experience in business strategy formulation, performance optimisation, and execution within complex or product-driven environments

COMPETENCIES

Leadership Competencies:

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

Knowledge and Skills:

Business strategy and planning
Financial and operational performance analysis
Market intelligence and insight-driven decision-making
Governance and reporting frameworks
Stakeholder engagement and collaboration
Strong commercial acumen

Education

Bachelor's Degree: Business, Commerce and Management Studies

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised

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