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
The Executive: Customer Onboarding is a pivotal role within the organization, reporting directly to the Chief Operations Officer (COO). The primary mission of this role is to lead and optimize the end-to-end client onboarding experience across Business Banking. This includes removing duplication, streamlining product onboarding journeys, and creating a seamless, consistent, and value-driven experience for both clients and bankers. The Executive champions the use of CRM platforms, automation, and AI to deliver personalized, lower-effort onboarding that enhances acquisition quality, reduces turnaround times, boosts client retention, and drives commercial value.
As a Senior Executive in the Absa Business Banking Chief Operations Office, you will excel in commercializing and monetizing strategies with a strong financial acumen. Your ability to leverage digital tools and technology to automate processes and generate commercial value will be paramount. With a focus on efficiency driven by automation, digitization, and cost optimization, you will consistently create demonstrated value for our clients.
Job Description
KEY FOCUS AREAS
- Design and implement a comprehensive client onboarding strategy.
- Streamline and enhance product onboarding journeys to eliminate duplication.
- Champion the use of CRM platforms, automation, and AI for personalized onboarding.
- Collaborate across segments, products, and technology teams to ensure seamless processes.
- Drive improvements in turnaround times, conversion rates, and customer effort scores.
- Lead the development of integrated customer value propositions.
- Monitor and refine onboarding journeys based on data-driven insights.
- Foster a customer-centric culture within the organization.
- Engage with strategic stakeholders to align onboarding priorities.
- Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards.
Client Onboarding Strategy and Execution
- Develop and execute the customer onboarding strategy to ensure long-term profitability.
- Lead cross-functional teams to implement streamlined onboarding journeys.
- Leverage technology to enhance client onboarding experiences.
- Monitor key performance indicators and drive continuous improvement.
- Align onboarding processes with overall business objectives and strategies.
- 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 Business Banking, 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.
- Design and deliver personalized customer value propositions.
- Enhance customer engagement through AI and data-driven insights.
- Implement strategies to improve customer retention and satisfaction.
- Ensure a consistent and value-driven customer experience across all touchpoints.
- Analyze customer feedback to drive improvements in onboarding processes.
- Interpret market and customer insights to inform operational plans and prioritise capability investments.
- Utilise customer data to improve processes and propositions, ensuring measurable customer value delivery.
- Instil 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.
- Identify new revenue opportunities through innovative customer value propositions.
- Collaborate with data analytics teams to model customer profitability.
- Drive the segment growth agenda in alignment with strategic priorities.
- Ensure investment decisions reflect both customer and product considerations.
- Foster a culture of sustainable, long-term value creation.
- 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.
- Design and enable next-generation customer solutions.
- Shape the evolution of payments as a value lever for customers.
- Stay informed of industry trends to support market relevance.
- Lead change initiatives to drive client-centric innovation.
- Ensure business decisions support strategic goals and client value.
- 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.
- Build and lead a high-performing, customer-centric team.
- Foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation.
- Ensure leadership capabilities align with future business needs.
- Attract, develop, and retain top talent.
- Empower leaders to drive transformation and culture change.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 specialisation.
- Influence the implementation of effective internal controls systems and corporate governance practices.
- 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.
- Manage relationships with key stakeholders to support aligned delivery and issue resolution.
- Ensure stakeholder expectations are managed and engagement is consistent with transformation priorities.
Education/ Qualification:
Post Graduate Degree: Honours Degree, Post Graduate Diploma and Professional Qualifications [NQF8] (Masters preferred).
Field of Study:
- Business Strategy, Economics, Marketing, Analytics, Finance, or a related field.
- 15+ years of experience in Business Banking or Financial Services, with strong exposure to customer experience design.
- At least 5 years in a senior or strategic leadership role.
- Proven success in leading customer onboarding or experience transformation initiatives.
- Experience leading cross-disciplinary teams in technology, products, segments, and integrated channels.
- Strong familiarity with CRM platforms and automation tools.
Leadership Competencies:
- Strategic Thinking
- Business Acumen
- Communication
- Influence
- Leadership
- Creativity and Innovation
- Delivering Results
- Adaptability
- Collaboration
- Customer Orientation
- Commercial Acumen
- Digital and Data Fluency
- Cross-functional Collaboration
- Process Orientation
- Analytical Skills
- Strong commercialization and monetization skills with an affinity for finance
- Digital affinity and dexterity that leverages technology to automate and create commercial value
- Mindset of efficiency driven by automation, digitization, and cost optimization, to create client value
- Experience in customer journey design and workflow optimization
- Strong commercial acumen linking onboarding experiences to bottom-line outcomes
- Effective stakeholder management and communication skills
- Data-driven mindset with comfort in performance reporting
- Passion for customer-centric innovation
- Experience with pricing strategy and capital allocation
- Proficiency in personalisation, lifecycle marketing, and campaign execution
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
