As the world’s leader in digital payments technology, Visa’s mission is to connect the world through the most creative, reliable and secure payment network – enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. The company’s dedication to innovation drives the rapid growth of connected commerce on any device, and fuels the dream of a cashless future for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analog to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce.

Risk Consulting Director SSA – Sub Sahara Africa (based in Johannesburg)

Position Summary

The Risk Consulting Director serves as key partner and lead on VISA consulting Risk Management engagements. The position is fundamental to further develop and scale the Risk practice within Visa Consulting & Analytic. The core focus of this role will be leading engagements and setup best practice in the area of credit, payment system and fraud risk management.

Key Expectations:

• Identify opportunity for Risk Consulting engagements with VISA Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) clients and execute, deliver on those. Primarily focus of engagement will be areas of payment, fraud and authorization risk, credit risk, as well as acquiring risk. Consulting engagements include, but are not limited to, end-to-end risk management reviews, relevant deployment of risk-related solutions (leveraging network and client data) for both issuers and acquirers.
• Acting as subject matter expert, she/he will provide deep domain expertise, acting as the quality partner to provide advice and support to clients across Sub-Sahara Africa. The incumbent will have significant hands-on experience of implementing risk best practices for both issuers and acquirers, leveraging client and network data, across all relevant payment products and channels.

• Self-driven and result oriented individual with the ability to handle numerous projects, focusing on delivery optimal solution to clients, adding tangible value to the client and VISA. Able to independently execute on an end to end consulting project from engaging the client, identify and define the optimal solution, and coordinate, execute delivery.

• Inclusive leadership, team player. Engagements may require to bring different teams together to better serve client needs; the incumbent is expected to unlock the potential coming from diverse teams’ cooperation. Program management, ability to lead discrete pieces of work, creating virtual teams, planning, and driving forward activity, managing stakeholders and taking full accountability for engagement results.

Specific Responsibilities:

• Developing trusted advisor relationships with client senior executives through impactful risk consulting engagements.
• Enable revenue from risk consulting services offered to issuing and acquiring clients to support both the global, CEMEA and SSA Visa Consulting growth strategy.
• Managing simultaneous risk consulting engagement teams (across credit, fraud, authorizations and acquiring risk) including initial client sales, problem disaggregation and planning, and quality assurance of final deliverable.
• Proactively engage with clients and Visa client leadership in regular strategic & planning discussions; cultivate and manage a pipeline of risk work with clients.
• Collaborate with peers in other functional areas (e.g. analytics, product, client support services and innovation) and across global/regional teams in project delivery.
• Produce insights and analyses to improve client performance, drive understanding of client issues and provide strategic guidance for client priorities across the payment P&L

Key Competencies

• Expertise of risk management in the domains of credit risk, fraud risk and operational risk.

• Market/Region knowledge is critical in the Sub-Sahara Africa markets

• Understanding of critical factors in driving profitability and growth for Visa's issuer, acquirer and merchant clients.

• Strong problem solving ability with strategic focus on impacting client ROI via enhanced risk management practices.

• Strong analytical skills, with demonstrated intellectual and analytical rigor.

• Highly motivated and ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high energy and demanding team-oriented environment (both with clients and within the organization)

• Excellent communication and presentation skills, both written and verbal, and ability to communicate at all levels within large organizations.

• Demonstrated managerial and collaboration capabilities.

• Ability to identify key strategic issues and to generate and deliver creative and innovative solutions to problems and opportunities. Understanding and implementing the use of Open Banking / Open APIs

• Ability to influence and negotiate with senior executives

Common Purpose, Uncommon Opportunity.  Everyone at Visa works with one goal in mind – making sure that Visa is the best way to pay and be paid, for everyone everywhere. This is our global vision and the common purpose that unites the entire Visa team.  As a global payments technology company, tech is at the heart of what we do: Our VisaNet network processes over 13,000 transactions per second for people and businesses around the world, enabling them to use digital currency instead of cash and checks. We are also global advocates for financial inclusion, working with partners around the world to help those who lack access to financial services join the global economy. Visa’s sponsorships, including the Olympics and FIFA™ World Cup, celebrate teamwork, diversity, and excellence throughout the world. If you have a passion to make a difference in the lives of people around the world, Visa offers an uncommon opportunity to build a strong, thriving career. Visa is fueled by our team of talented employees who continuously raise the bar on delivering the convenience and security of digital currency to people all over the world. Join our team and find out how Visa is everywhere you want to be.

Specific Requirements

• Passion for committed execution and continuous learning.
• Minimum of 10+ years Retail banking experience and exposure – ideal candidate should have spent time in Risk Management and Portfolio Management work and projects.
• Consistent record of accomplishment in consulting, broad industry acumen and domain knowledge of the Risk industry.
• Experience in defining and implementing comprehensive risk and compliance governance frameworks. Model risk and compliance management processes aligned with regulatory constraints. Comfort with working on ambiguous problems with incomplete data.
• Should include roles with P&L responsibility for consulting projects, preferably with a combination of regional and global experience strongly desired.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent. MBA or Masters degree preferred.
• Knowledge of risk management systems, including decision engines, fraud mitigation tools and scoring methodologies.
• Subject matter expertise in relevant payment and risk frameworks/legislation/best practices, including PCI, GARS and Basel guidelines
• Previous experience of large scale transactional services ideally processing payments.
• Versed in analytical software and Microsoft programs.

• Excellent communication, story-telling and presentation skills.

• Strong teamwork and collaboration skills with the ability to work effectively with inter-disciplinary groups.

• Able to travel frequently and work on client site for extended periods across Sub-Sahara Africa.

• Fluency in English mandatory. Additional languages (eg. French) desired.