Executive: Fraud Risk and Operations

Absa, a prominent financial institution with over a century of history, is seeking a seasoned executive to spearhead its efforts in combating fraud across its Personal and Private Banking (PPB) division. This pivotal role will ensure the protection of customers, employees, shareholders, and the organisation from a growing landscape of internal and external fraud threats. The successful candidate will be instrumental in shaping a proactive, intelligence-driven approach to fraud management, aiming to prevent fraudulent activities before they occur, detect and disrupt them in real-time, and manage their impact fairly while facilitating recoveries and strengthening the overall control environment.

This position demands a delicate balance between robust risk mitigation and the provision of a seamless customer experience. It requires an individual capable of reducing bank losses, safeguarding customers, meeting regulatory expectations, managing colleague capacity, optimising operational efficiency, and ensuring positive customer interactions. The executive will be the single point of accountability for PPB's fraud strategy, translating overarching policies into effective, real-time defence mechanisms without compromising the customer journey. Furthermore, they will champion the adoption of fraud risk appetite and drive accountability for fraud outcomes within all relevant business units and channels.

Strategic Leadership and Fraud Governance

The core of this executive role involves providing strategic leadership and oversight across the entire fraud value chain. This encompasses developing fraud strategy, establishing risk governance, and managing all aspects from detection and recovery to investigations, customer management, technology integration, industry collaborations, and regulatory engagement. A key responsibility will be to set the strategic vision for how PPB will adapt to emerging fraud trends and threats, coupled with the design of a practical roadmap to mitigate these risks effectively.

You will be tasked with embedding a unified, enterprise-wide fraud risk governance framework within PPB. This framework is designed to foster proactive fraud prevention and minimise vulnerabilities present in both traditional branch environments and increasingly sophisticated digital channels. A significant part of the role will involve leading crucial fraud-related engagements and reporting to executive and board-level governance committees, as well as interacting with regulators and relevant industry forums. Ultimately, the goal is to achieve a demonstrable reduction in fraud losses through the implementation of effective controls that minimise unauthorised transactions and financial exposure.

Driving Innovation and Industry Collaboration

A crucial aspect of this position is staying at the forefront of evolving fraud typologies, customer behaviour, digital adoption trends, and industry threat intelligence. This requires continuous research and close collaboration with various internal stakeholders, including business units, customer channels, technology departments, operations, and risk and compliance teams. You will lead the design of innovative solutions to protect financial assets and customer data from fraudulent activities, such as AI-driven scams and synthetic identity theft.

This includes actively monitoring global financial systems to identify emerging threats and enhance threat intelligence capabilities. Proactive analysis of industry data will be essential to predict future attack vectors, recommend preventative solutions, and conduct proof-of-concept trials for new technologies. Partnering with the technology division to architect proactive risk mitigation strategies and evaluate cutting-edge anti-fraud technologies will be paramount to securing banking operations and enabling rapid responses to threats through intelligence-led decisioning and strong industry collaboration.

Furthermore, the role demands building and nurturing external collaborations with peer banks, law enforcement agencies, industry associations, regulators, and payment ecosystem partners. This network will be vital for strengthening fraud intelligence and improving response mechanisms. The executive will also be responsible for creating internal awareness and providing education to teams and stakeholders regarding evolving regulatory compliance standards and fraud prevention protocols.

Defining and Executing Fraud Risk Strategy

You will lead the formulation and execution of PPB’s comprehensive Fraud Risk Strategy, ensuring it directly addresses current and anticipated fraud challenges. This involves close collaboration with business units, customer channels, technology, operations, and risk & compliance. A key responsibility is defining the fraud risk appetite across the businesses in partnership with relevant executives and the Chief Risk Officer. This risk appetite must then be translated into practical controls, operating standards, clear thresholds, effective escalation paths, and actionable management responses.

This role requires driving the formal sign-off, ownership, and accountability for the defined fraud risk appetite and associated outcomes within respective business units and customer channels. You will partner with the second line of defence (2LOD) Risk function to define and enforce fraud risk standards and policies across PPB, taking on the first line of defence (1LOD) custodianship and maintenance. This includes ensuring that all fraud risks, controls, processes, and accountabilities are meticulously documented through risk and control self-assessments, critical process assessments, and control libraries.

Effective governance and decision-making routines will need to be driven to continuously monitor fraud performance. This necessitates providing strategic reporting on fraud losses, recovery rates, remediation efforts, and overall net loss performance. Finally, you will be responsible for ensuring improvements in system efficacy by consistently evaluating the false-positive rates of newly implemented security solutions and implementing necessary remedial actions.

In South Africa, an executive role of this nature typically commands a substantial remuneration package, reflecting the significant responsibility and specialised expertise required. Financial institutions are the primary employers for such positions, with Absa being a leading example. Career progression from this role often leads to broader chief risk officer or head of operations mandates within the financial services sector, offering significant opportunities for growth and impact.

Qualifications and Professional Credentials

•Relevant postgraduate qualification in Commerce, Law, Risk Management, Accounting, Forensic Investigation, Data Analytics, Information Systems, Business Administration or a related discipline is preferred.

•Professional certifications such as Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), or Financial Crime/ Anti-Money Laundering (CAMS), Risk Management, Compliance, Audit, Cyber Risk and Data Analytics credentials are advantageous.

•Executive leadership development, digital transformation, operational excellence or enterprise risk management training is beneficial.

Preferred Experience

•15+ years’ experience in: Fraud Risk Management / Fraud Operations/Financial Crime and Banking / Financial Services

•5–10 years at Senior/Executive Leadership level

Proven track record in

•Leading large, complex fraud environments

•Digital fraud prevention

•Regulatory and Industry Engagement

•Exposure to data-driven decision-making and analytics tools

•Proven track record in process improvement and operational efficiency

•Experience working in cross-functional teams across Business, Risk, and Technology

•Demonstrate end-to-end accountability for outcomes, not just functional delivery

•Operate with enterprise mindset, beyond siloed functions

•Enable faster decision-making and reduced escalation layers

•Drive alignment across multiple stakeholders and business units

Leadership and Behavioral Competencies

•Strategic judgement: Able to interpret fraud trends, regulatory expectations, customer impact and business priorities into clear strategic choices.

•Operational command: Comfortable leading high-volume, time-sensitive, customer-impacting operations with strong discipline around execution, controls and service levels.

•Risk leadership: Strong understanding of three lines of defence, risk appetite, control effectiveness, issue management, assurance and conduct expectations.

•Data-led decision making: Able to use analytics, models, intelligence, customer insights and operational metrics to make evidence-based decisions.

•Enterprise collaboration: Able to align business units, technology, risk, compliance, operations and external partners around a single fraud agenda.

•Customer focus: Committed to protecting customers while managing liability, regulatory, financial and reputational risk.

•Change leadership: Able to lead transformation, simplify complexity, build adoption and move teams from reactive execution to proactive intelligence-led operations.

•People leadership: Builds resilient teams, develops scarce fraud capabilities, manages succession and promotes a culture of accountability, integrity and continuous learning.

Technical Capabilities and Experience

•Extensive senior leadership experience in fraud risk management, banking operations, operational risk, financial crime, digital risk, payments, investigations or customer operations.

•Deep understanding of banking products and channels, including deposits, payments, cards, lending, digital banking, merchant ecosystems, branch, contact centre and relationship-managed segments.

•Proven experience managing fraud losses, fraud operations, case management, investigations, complaints, recoveries and customer remediation.

•Strong knowledge of fraud typologies, including scams, account takeover, identity theft, synthetic identity, application fraud, mule activity, internal fraud, merchant fraud and cyber-enabled fraud.

•Working knowledge of fraud detection tools, rules engines, behavioural analytics, machine learning, AI, authentication controls, case management platforms and data governance.

•Experience with governance forums, executive reporting, regulatory engagement, audit management, control remediation and combined assurance.

•Ability to design and operate fraud scorecards, dashboards, KRIs, KPIs, risk appetite metrics and operational performance measures.

Education

Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Business, Commerce and Management Studies (Required)

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