Job Summary

Role will be focused on financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and reporting of management information within central CIB Financial Decision Support (FDS). This central team provides continuous decision support for Exco and senior management within CIB. The role performs financial planning, analysis and reporting in an accurate, complete and timely way; and continuously seeks to improve operations by scaling automated financial processes to doing deep dive and trend analyses to crafting financial solutions aligned to all appropriate business financial health and growth objectives. The role equips finance and business leadership with sound financial information to support decision making at all levels. The role enables the business in achieving the operational objectives of the business by building an agile finance enablement to transform, to bring stewardship, financial integrity & insights to the current state of the business & its future possibilities to deliver on the new operating model and to achieve the business objectives. This role co-creates Finance capabilities required to lead to exponential growth and business effectiveness.

Job Description

Key Role Responsibilities

• Serve as a subject matter expert on financial data integrity, accounting processes, reconciliations’, analysis and reporting for end-to-end Financial Planning and Management in the business area.
• Develop and sustain knowledge and experience on the end to end processes, including relevant systems within scope of work.
• Responsible for continuous operational excellence and real-time responsiveness of finance to enable business to achieve growth and profitability objectives.
• Prepare for all cycles in advance and ensure adequate engagement with the relevant finance and business teams.
• Focus on information-driven performance improvement and formulate data into easy access standardised views.
• Ensure that stakeholders are  appraised of key financial issues that need to be raised with executive leadership to enable integrity and timely management the BU.
• Identify and innovate operating practices to optimize the function. Embrace digital solutions and ddopt what’s ‘best for absa’ approach in finance practices.
• Have a holistic eco-system view of business, that is, geography, customer, channel and product in developing information views of business.
• Book of work contribution: Build innovative finance business case financial information, insights and benefits tracking’s’ solutions to continuously inform management decisions.
• Transform and evolve Finance planning, tracking and control processes.
• Know BU financial ambitions and balance sheet aspirations of CIB in performance reporting.
• Contribute to the effectiveness of the core finance processes for CIB Finance (annual planning, forecasting, and reporting).
• Understand and integrate Treasury, Risk, and Finance data from a BU perspective, where appropriate.
• Maintain stewardship and excellence which drives performance and sustainable growth through preservation of financial integrity.
• Be an active force for good in society through business execution.
• Contribute to BCM & cybersecurity processes relevant to the BU and finance execution.
• Build trust in the finance function through the creation of a single source of financial information which is corroborated by related management information sources and alignment to the agreed accounting principles, methodologies, and underlying data are correctly applied.
• Generate innovative easy to comprehend progress reports for leaders on their strategic agenda, short-term and long-term plans and investments, operational success metrics, efficiencies, risks and mitigations.
• Interact with the stakeholders to agree minimum quality standards, as well as an agreed method of communicating and resolving any identified quality deficiencies in the reporting process.
• Own the process of delivery of high-quality information for regular and ad-hoc enhanced reporting to agreed requirements, timelines, and standards.
• Act in line with the correct governance and control frameworks across the Finance team, as well as for proactively addressing any deficiencies and exceptions.
• Develop and implement control procedures as deficiencies or exceptions are identified which support the production of error-free reports. Assess and drive improvement of business accounting practices and policies.
• Take a commercial view on business and provide contextual insights into performance reports.
• Generate finance narratives and insights driving business; and build pioneering new propositions.
• Ensure appropriate, quality and timeous delivery of accurate financial and non-financial management information to support business objectives and expectations, including appropriate financial and non-financial metrics, valid and insightful comments and packaging the information in a relevant and appropriate manner.
• Deliver reporting reflecting deep commercial, holistic understanding, coherency, clarity, and contextualisation. Tell the story with passion and conviction.
• Provide thought-leadership, insight, influence and challenge on evolving stakeholder information requirements and reporting processes to deliver analytics.
• Align to processes around month-end, year-end and planning cycles across the CIB finance community and BU based on the requirements from Group. Prepare for all cycles in advance and ensure adequate engagement with the relevant finance and BU teams.
• Manage the production of regular, high quality, standardised financial and non-financial reporting and analytics to Business and Finance; and focus on effective collaborative stakeholder hand-offs in the production
• Network with finance colleagues across GFD and create awareness of challenges, opportunities and issues and encourage collaboration
• Focus on Finance skills evolution and remaining relevant.

Qualification

• Bachelor’s degree and CPA (K)
• Knowledge and skills: Proficiency with Excel and PowerPoint essential, Compass system and Power BI experience is advantageous.
• Experience in executing finance processes (e.g. Reporting, Planning, Analysis etc).
• Experience in innovative commercial environments
• Knowledge of Absa accounting policies and procedures.
• Good understanding of business strategic objectives.
• Good understanding of business processes and activities and the underlying cost driver
• Financial Modelling
• Banking experience
• Good communication skills, particularly the ability to summarize large amounts of data and present in a concise and readily understood format.