Head Customer Risk Management

As the threats and risks of Financial Crime increase in scale and complexity, Absa Group Financial Crime is responsible for ensuring that the Bank manages the risks of money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions and bribery and corruption. The Financial Crime function implements a Financial Crime Risk framework to meet the requirements of anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism, anti-bribery & corruption and economic sanctions laws and regulations.

• Provide continuous, risk‑based assurance over the existing customer base
• Reduce reliance on ad‑hoc reviews by embedding standardised processes.
• Improve detection and prioritisation of customer‑level financial crime risk.
• Create Customer Risk Assessment Framework; standardised scoring and segmentation.
• Develop Industry Exposure Programmes; sector playbooks and typologies.
• Establish Continuous Monitoring Engine; rules, models and alerts tuned to customer risk.
• Construct Data & Analytics Hub; customer‑level data enrichment, link analysis and trend detection.
• Write Operational Playbooks; escalation, remediation and supervisory reporting.
• Chair a Customer Risk Forum to review heatmaps, escalations and remediation progress.
• Engage with Absa in industry forums, regulator engagements and coordinate with law enforcement where appropriate.

• 10+ years in financial crime, AML, sanctions, or related risk roles within banking, financial services or law enforcement.
• Experience in building and scaling customer risk or surveillance capabilities.
• Deep subject matter knowledge of industry exposures (e.g., precious metals, diamonds, online gambling) and associated typologies.
• Strong data and analytics literacy; experience working with data scientists and surveillance technology.
• Demonstrated stakeholder management and change leadership at senior levels.
• Qualifications: degree in finance, law, criminology, economics or related field; professional certifications (e.g., CAMS) preferred.