We are looking for a product and operations-focused Compliance Lead with strong compliance knowledge and the ability to meaningfully apply this to our business without undue disruption.
As our Compliance Lead, you will need to learn and collaborate with our Product, Development, Sales, Marketing, Operations & CX teams and acquire good knowledge of our payments platforms and any other systems that make our products work. This is essential to applying your compliance knowledge to our products and not just generic compliance rules.
You will provide strategic direction to the organisation on compliance-related matters; proactively advising and guiding the business on existing and emerging regulatory compliance requirements and optimising customer screenings and verifications in line with regulatory and risk management requirements.; while leading and managing a team of Compliance & Onboarding Agents and executing compliance strategies to improve conversion rates of customer accounts. Our ideal candidate is hands-on and willing to get their hands dirty wherever necessary.
As a member of the Manco & People Manco Teams, the purpose of this role is to advance the organisation and its Compliance function, providing purposeful and constructive leadership and direction to ensure that SnapScan has the appropriate Compliance structure, capabilities, capacity, best practices, processes and governance in place, to optimise customer screenings and verifications in line with regulatory and risk management requirements and improve conversion rates of customer accounts.
This exciting position, reporting directly to our Head of Operations, is key to enabling the company to continue to deliver quantifiable value to our customers and help craft the future of SnapScan. It also provides our ideal candidate with a fantastic opportunity to:
- Work with highly competent professionals in a great culture
- Use your expertise to create and shape the principles that underpin the future of SnapScan’s products and platform
If you can dive in and lead well, then there is a massive opportunity to deliver impactful work to the market and to create an environment of learning and innovation!
Key responsibilities will include:
Organisational Leadership
- Being part of Manco and People Manco and contributing to:
- ~Co-creation and execution of the company’s strategy, OKRs, culture, policies and practices
- ~Creating the organisational alignment required to turn the strategy into a reality
- ~Instilling the organisation’s vision and inspiring others to share in that vision
Functional Leadership - Leading the Compliance Function & Team
- Setting the Compliance function up for success with deliberate intention (i.e. advancing the Compliance Function)
- ~Developing and executing a customer screening and verification strategy based on approved SBSA (Standard Bank South Africa) policy documents and advice and in accordance with FICA, KYC and AML regulations
- ~Creating and implementing onboarding strategies and training material for various onboarding channels (e.g. SBSA sales teams and systems) to ensure continued compliance, minimal back-office noise, and enable conversion rates
- Leading the Compliance function in areas of team development and change management
- Leading and successfully executing high-impact initiatives that advance the function and the value it adds to the organisation
- Enabling and building the organisation’s culture within the Compliance function by:
- ~Personally living and role modelling the organisation’s values to ensure that Compliance team members thrive and deliverables are met
- ~Creating a positive environment within the Compliance function that promotes high performance and positive morale, as well as personal growth and development for team members
- ~Holding team members accountable for doing the same
Direction
- Providing clear direction for the Compliance function
- Setting/co-creating goals/OKRs for the Engineering Function
- ~Cascading the company strategy & OKRs to the Compliance Function and translating this into actionable goals for performance and growth within the team:
- ~~Work that needs to be done is clearly defined and prioritised
- ~~Resources are effectively utilised and allocated
- ~~Context for the work to be completed is provided; there is alignment and understanding of the business importance of the work to be done across teams
- ~~The teams are mobilised - there is regular communication to ensure that everyone is onboard
- ~~There is healthy collaboration with other internal stakeholders
- Ensuring the Compliance function’s readiness for the change
- Executing smooth, successful change initiatives/transitions/ transformations that meet organisational objectives
- Aligning and mobilising the Compliance teams:
- ~Enabling the Compliance team to understand how they’re expected to implement key initiatives, what role they play, where it’s going, and why it’s essential
- ~Engaging with team members to prepare, support, and lead them through change to achieve the organisation’s objectives
- Guiding the Product Team to implement sound compliance strategies into our product development process
Execution & Results
- Effectively moving the Compliance function from “strategising” to “executing”
- Ensuring that key accountabilities & KPIs are defined for each role within the function; i.e. everyone knows where they fit in–what they need to do and how it supports the organisation
- Continuously increasing execution effectiveness by being deliberate in:
- ~articulating the function’s purpose and strategy
- ~setting and managing the function’s OKRs/goals
- ~planning and project managing the function’s actions
- ~implementing the function’s learnings
- Compliance delivery oversight
- ~Ensuring that all actions taken progress the function towards achieving the required goals/KRs
- ~Continuously assessing compliance policies, processes and standards and actioning areas for improvement
- ~Keeping track of projects and deliverables with internal and external dependencies and addressing concerns which require intervention to ensure the scalability, customer satisfaction, and supportability of the end solutions, products, and/or processes
- ~Monitoring the reliability and performance of all internal systems and actioning improvements
- Assisting Product in iterating the merchant signup processes with regard to FICA and verification processes to optimise the conversion rates of verified merchants by identifying trends through reviewing metrics and reviewing customer feedback
- Reporting & Analytics
- ~Defining and tracking compliance performance metrics
- ~Analysing data and using insights to drive data-informed decision-making and continuous improvement
- ~Reporting on compliance conversion metrics and actioning improvements
Capability & Capacity Building
- Being the custodian of deliberate capability and capacity building for the Compliance function
- Capability & Capacity Building includes:
- ~Talent management, hiring, onboarding, retention, performance assessments, upskilling, coaching and developing team members, and succession planning i.e. investing time and energy in getting the right team in place; and ensuring that the right people are in the right roles
- ~Creating a sustainable, healthy, skilled and high-performing Compliance team, environment and culture
- ~Facilitating the design and implementation of team structure within the Compliance Function to achieve company OKRs, ensuring that job profiles are clearly defined and that personal development plans are designed to advance competencies and excellence in roles
- Fostering innovation, learning & continuous improvement:
- ~Identifying areas for continuous improvement and staying on top of new trends and developments in the fintech compliance space
- ~Implementing standardised procedures, best practices and tools to enhance productivity and process efficiencies, increase quality and streamline team workflows
- ~Building strategic competence within the Compliance function
- ~Development of Self - continuous learning & self-growth (personal, job-specific & technical knowledge)
- Mobilising, focusing & sustaining resources of potential energy in both self and the Compliance function to achieve desired company OKRs/strategy
Stakeholder Management
- Establishing strategic relationships with relevant internal (Product, Operations, CX, Engineering & Sales) & external (Standard Bank) stakeholders to help achieve shared strategic objectives, to communicate SnapScan onboarding processing and to ensure continued compliance, minimal back-office noise, and improved conversion rates
- Overseeing and executing all back-office processes as they relate to the SnapScan sales funnel, including remote and face-to-face merchant registrations with assistance from a designated customer onboarding specialist(s)
- Providing oversight of the execution of the Compliance Strategy where screening and verification are handled by other team members (including SBSA Compliant Workforce training)
- Liaising with SBSA’s Business Compliance Officers to manage the regulatory framework, product updates and features as they relate to the compliance function and any other regulatory framework management. Assisting Exco with ensuring that there is tight integration and cross-functional alignment between the Design, Product, Engineering, R&D, Data, Quality and Agile teams
- Working effectively across cross-functional business units/functions and leaders
Compliance & Governance
- Ensuring that all Compliance practices adhere to regulatory, security & privacy requirements
- Ensuring compliance with POPI, security and PCI regulations
- Ensuring effective risk mitigation
- Ensuring that the Compliance function complies with all internal policies and procedures
This job may be for you if:
- You are highly process-driven and have a passion for creating effective systems.
- Comfortable with dealing with internal & external senior stakeholders.
- You are relentless in your customer focus.
- You relate well to people and easily establish good working relationships across all functions and management levels, working collaboratively and independently.
- You’re level-headed and cool under pressure. When things change, you know how to roll with the punches.
- You are emotionally intelligent.
- You are adaptable and flexible to deal with rapid changes occurring in the industry effectively.
- You have tenacity and stamina – you see each project through to the end, using solid organisational skills and attention to detail to achieve the best possible result.
- You can operate at a range of levels – both in terms of big-picture strategic thinking, thought leadership and getting into the data and analysis.
- You will blow us away with your work ethic, your passion, your integrity, your attitude and your energy!
You should be great at:
- Communication (both verbal & written) - this role is communication-heavy and requires frequent verbal and written communication with others
- Being persuasive
- Team leadership, management and hiring
- Planning, organising and time management
- Stakeholder management at all levels, both inside and outside the company
- Analytical and critical thinking to help find creative solutions to problems
- Collaborating effectively with others, working in teams, building relationships, sharing ideas, resolving conflict
You are our ideal candidate if you have:
- Any combination of relevant education and experience and/or related professional designations/ certifications in this field is highly desirable.
- ~Relevant education:
- ~~A bachelor's degree in a relevant field, such as Law, or professional certifications in compliance (e.g. ACAMS, Risk Management or Compliance Management)
- ~Relevant experience:
- ~~A successful track record of 3+ years as the sole Compliance Officer or Compliance Lead/Manager
- ~~1+ years managing and leading an Onboarding/AML/Compliance Team (preferably in the Financial Services/ Payments/ Banking/ Fintech sector)
- Industry knowledge of FinTech and Payments
- Strong knowledge of:
- ~Financial regulatory regimes including conduct risk, systems and controls and regulatory reporting
- ~South African financial regulation
- ~Anti-money laundering legislation
- Sound knowledge and experience in:
- ~Leadership and coaching
- ~Process improvement, design and implementation
- Good understanding of data and how to use it in service of continuous improvement
- Bonus points for previous experience in:
- ~Scaling compliance in line with company needs and changes to infrastructure
- ~Setting up compliance flows for new financial service products
- ~Working with product teams/BAs to map compliance impacts and dependencies
- ~Query compilation and data analysis
The benefits of joining our team:
- A competitive salary
- 30 days of annual leave
- A medical aid contribution/fringe benefit of up to R2 000 per month
- An Apple MacBook and the necessary gear
- Discretionary annual bonus
- Hybrid working - you can choose whether you want to work remotely or from the office, with at least 3 mandatory office days per month.
- Paid undercover parking (when working from the office)
- Lots of opportunities to learn
- Mental health days
- The opportunity to be part of a great team and culture!
