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

Lead the formulation and execution of the Retail Banking Strategy, integrating Customer, Product and Channel strategies, together with sustainability and payments innovation, to deliver long-term value for the organisation. The role is responsible for setting the growth ambition and competitive market positioning, identifying and commercializing new revenue streams, navigating strategic trade-offs, and steering bold investment decisions.
By shaping and prioritizing strategic initiatives and embedding robust planning disciplines, this role ensures the seamless execution of the cluster’s strategic agenda. It drives business performance through governance, rigorous reporting cycles, and continuous monitoring of execution effectiveness and strategic risk exposure. Ultimately, the role anchors the clusters strategic intent with a focus on delivering measurable outcomes and resilient growth.

Job Description

KEY FOCUS AREAS

Lead development of an integrated Retail strategy across capabilities to ensure long-term competitiveness and sustainability.

Shape strategic direction through structured analysis of markets, internal performance, and strategic trade-offs.

Drive alignment of portfolio strategies including Sustainability, Payments, Product, Channel, and Customer strategies.

Lead strategic planning processes, target setting, and enterprise performance management.

Oversee execution of enterprise-wide strategic initiatives, ensuring interdependencies are managed effectively.

Champion a disciplined performance management approach linked to strategy execution and capital allocation.

Manage governance and reporting forums to drive strategic alignment, leadership accountability, and decision-making.

Serve as a key advisor to Retail leadership on enterprise strategy, investment decisions, and performance insights.

Enable transformation through high-impact programs aligned to the 'Bank of the Future' agenda.
Identify new revenue streams and monetization pathways across products, platforms, and partnerships.
Align functional and business unit strategies with the overarching Retail Bank agenda
Interface with leadership and key stakeholders to ensure strategic visibility, adoption, and execution readiness

ACCOUNTABILITIES

Strategy Formulation and Execution

Develop a cohesive Retail strategy framework, integrating insights from customers, products, markets, and external forces.

Translate strategic ambition into actionable plans, prioritised initiatives, and measurable outcomes.

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.
Identify new commercial opportunities, including white spaces and underleveraged capabilities, to drive future revenue streams
Ensure alignment with Group strategy and industry frameworks, such as the South African payments roadmap
Develop enterprise-wide execution plans, ensuring initiatives are sequenced, resourced.

Customer Primacy

Ensure customer-centricity is embedded in strategy development and delivery.

Integrate customer data and insights into strategic priorities and capability investments.

Integrate feedback loops into strategy design, ensuring iterative adjustment based on evolving customer voice and market sentiment.
Prioritize strategic initiatives that deliver tangible customer value.
Use customer metrics as success indicators, embedding customer metrics into strategic performance monitoring.
Orchestrate cross-functional alignment to ensure business units execute transformation in ways that are responsive to customer needs and pain points.
Champion industry partnerships that foster collaborative innovation and open banking capabilities expanding customer choice and personalization.
Advocate for the customer agenda at executive and board forums, ensuring strategic trade-offs consider customer impact first.

Sustainable Growth

Shape growth pathways that balance short-term performance and long-term resilience.

Align growth strategies with the bank’s sustainability and transformation agendas.

Support strategic investments and resource allocation to maximise economic and stakeholder value.

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.
Facilitate transformation adoption across the organization to build capability and culture for sustained strategy delivery
Lead ecosystem orchestration through councils, forums, and strategic platforms that amplify sustainable innovation

Customer-Driven Innovation and Change

Identify future business model shifts and innovation opportunities through strategy and foresight work.

Translate strategic intent into scalable change programs across the ecosystem.

Promote adaptive strategy processes that respond to market disruption and transformation needs.

Monitor competitive landscape and identify opportunities to improve products, services, or operations.

Drive continuous improvement and innovation within the team to enhance customer outcomes.

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.

Align change agenda to the strategic agenda, making customer impact a central criterion for investment, performance, and success evaluation

Leading Talent

Lead a high-performing strategy and performance team with strong analytical, commercial, and change capabilities.

Enable leadership engagement with strategy through coaching, storytelling, and co-creation.

Build internal capability in strategic thinking, planning, and execution.

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.

Direct the development and implementation of human capability strategies to support people management priorities.

Operational Effectiveness

Define and manage strategic planning cycles, performance reviews, and leadership governance forums.

Ensure operationalisation of strategic priorities through clear execution plans and ownership.

Drive consistency in tracking performance against strategy at all levels.

Operationalise strategic goals into functional plans with clear deliverables, timelines and scorecards to enable effective tracking of 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.

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.

Good Governance, Risk and Compliance

Lead the governance of strategy, planning, and performance forums.

Ensure transparency, documentation, and traceability of strategic decisions and trade-offs.

Align strategy and risk processes to enable proactive risk-aware planning.
Monitor execution effectiveness and strategic risk exposures, implementing proactive controls and interventions

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.

Influence the implementation of effective internal controls systems and corporate governance practices.

Data Monetisation

Integrate data-driven insights into strategy formulation and performance management.

Support the identification of data monetisation opportunities within strategic initiatives.

Collaborate with data and analytics teams to enable forecasting, scenario planning, and real-time performance tracking.

Stakeholder Management

Partner with executive leaders to align on strategic priorities, transformation, and performance outcomes.

Manage cross-functional engagement to ensure coherence and buy-in to strategic plans.

Lead interactions with Group strategy, finance, and risk teams to ensure vertical and horizontal alignment.

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:

Business Strategy, Management Consulting, Economics, Finance, Management, or related fields. MBA or postgraduate qualification preferred.

Work Experience:

10+ 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.

Demonstrated success in leading strategy formulation, planning, and enterprise performance management
Experience in engaging executive stakeholders in setting strategic direction, driving transformation, and managing performance.

COMPETENCIES

Leadership Competencies:

Strategic Thinking

Business Acumen

Communication

Influence

Leadership

Creativity and Innovation

Delivering Results

Adaptability

Collaboration

Knowledge and Skills:

Corporate and competitive strategy formulation

Strategic planning and execution

Enterprise performance management

Strategic initiative prioritisation

Transformation program design

Governance and decision-making frameworks

Leadership reporting and insights

Stakeholder alignment and facilitation

Education

Postgraduate Degrees and Professional Qualifications: 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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