Executive: Fraud Risk and Operations

Job Summary

•Lead industry research evolving fraud typologies, customer behaviour, digital adoption and industry threat intelligence – effectively collaborating with Business Units, Customer Channels, Technology, Operations and Risk & Compliance.

•Lead industry research on fraud prevention and designing innovative solutions to protect financial assets and customer data from fraudulent activities. This includes monitoring global financial systems to identify emerging fraud typologies like AI-driven scams and synthetic identity theft to strengthen threat intelligence capabilities.

•Proactively analyse industry data from fraud-related sources to predict future attack vectors, recommend proactive solutions and conduct proof of concepts (POC).

•Partner with Technology to architect proactive risk mitigation strategies and evaluate anti-fraud technologies to secure banking operations. This involves enabling faster response to emerging fraud threats through intelligence-led decisioning, rapid control deployment and strong industry collaboration.

•Provide relevant insights to create awareness and education to internal teams and stakeholders on evolving regulatory compliance standards and fraud prevention protocols.

•Build external collaboration with peer banks, law enforcement, industry associations, regulators and payment ecosystem partners to strengthen fraud intelligence and response.

•Lead the formulation and execution of PPB’s Fraud Risk Strategy that responds to evolving fraud typologies, customer behaviour, digital adoption and industry threat intelligence – effectively collaborating with Business Units, Customer Channels, Technology, Operations and Risk & Compliance.

•Lead and define the fraud risk appetite across the businesses in collaboration with the relevant executives and the Chief Risk Officer, ensuring translation fraud risk appetite into practical controls, operating standards, thresholds, indicators, escalation paths and management actions. This includes driving sign-off, ownership and accountability of fraud risk appetite and fraud outcomes in the respective business units and customer channels.

•Partner with 2LOD Risk to define and enforce fraud risk standards and policies across PPB, assuming 1LOD custodianship and maintenance thereof. This include ensuring that fraud risks, controls, processes and accountabilities are fully documented through relevant risk and control self-assessments, critical process assessments and control libraries.

•Drive effective governance and decision-making routines to monitor fraud performance, providing strategic reporting on fraud loss, recoveries, remediation, and net loss performance.

•Ensure improvements in system efficacy by consistently evaluating the false-positive rate of newly implemented security solutions and implementing remedial actions.

•Lead the design and implementation of prevention strategies and controls across onboarding, authentication, payments, lending, cards, digital, branch, contact centre, merchant and third-party journeys, while ensuring ownership and accountability is maintained across respective business units and channels.

•Oversee fraud detection management, monitoring, alert triage, operational response and real-time decisioning capabilities, including rules management/governance, behavioural analytics, real-time transaction monitoring, device intelligence, biometric signals, anomaly detection and fraud scoring.

•Optimise fraud detection capabilities to ensure proactive identification and responsiveness to emerging threats, scam typologies, mule networks, account takeover patterns, synthetic identity risks, internal fraud indicators and organised crime trends.

•Partner with data science, technology and model risk teams to improve model accuracy, reduce false positives, manage false negatives & strengthen explainability of fraud decisions.

•Drive a continuous learning loop from incidents, complaints, industry intelligence, recoveries and investigations into improved controls, customer education and operational playbooks.

•Drive improvements in time-to-detection by tracking the speed at which new, sophisticated threat vectors are identified and neutralized.

•Oversee customer fraud capabilities for incident reporting and case management, through inbound and outbound channels (including voice, WhatsApp, In-app, emails and other) – ensuring effective customer contact strategies, account restrictions, customer resolutions.

•Lead and optimise fraud case investigations and intelligence capabilities to ensure effective fraud recoveries, case execution and evidence management, enabling quicker fraud case adjudication, resolution and customer feedback-loop, as well as providing root-cause analysis insights for continuous improvements.

•Oversee case adjudication and customer complaints capabilities, ensuring that fraud case decisions and customer outcomes are fair, consistent, explainable and aligned to the bank’s liability model, conduct standards and treating-customers-fairly principles. This include defining and maintaining fraud liability model, customer vulnerability considerations and applicable ex-gratia or remediation frameworks, informed and validated with relevant stakeholders and forums.

•Design customer awareness and education programmes to effectively engage customers on fraud threats and modus operandi such as scams, vishing, etc; taking integrated approaches on prevention messaging and fraud communication across internal channels (digital, branch, contact centre, relationship-managed channels) and external channels (social media, television, radio, etc)

•Drive effective customer support to improve customer experience through speed of response, clarity of communication, consistency of decisioning and visibility of case progress.

•Promote use of customer feedback, complaints data and ombudsman insights to improve controls, colleague guidance and fraud experience designs.

•Define and sponsor the fraud technology roadmap, ensuring alignment with fraud strategies, operational needs, data architecture and enterprise technology standards.

•Champion a unified fraud engagement layer supported by specialist fraud intelligence, investigation, case management and decisioning capabilities.

•Prioritise automation, AI-assisted case intake, evidence collection, investigation support, rules optimisation, model monitoring and operational workflow improvements.

•Facilitate engagements with Technology to ensure fraud platforms are resilient, scalable, integrated and capable of supporting real-time decisioning and rapid response to emerging fraud threats.

•Act as the Product Owner to ensure fraud control enhancements, technology investments, data capabilities and operating model changes are prioritised and delivered timeously.

•Prioritise fraud initiatives and drive key decisions with relevant stakeholders on operational capacity, technology requirements and remediation actions based on risk, customer impact and business value.

•Represent PPB Fraud in relevant governance forums such as enterprise risk committees, executive leadership committees, board-level committees and regulatory engagements where required.

•Champion preparations and readiness for regulatory reviews, internal audit, external audit, assurance reviews and supervisory engagements relating to fraud risk and resilience. This include ensuring robust control documentation, regulatory confidence and disciplined issue remediation is maintained.

•Partner with second line risk, compliance, operational resilience, financial crime, legal, privacy, cybersecurity, forensics and internal audit to ensure effective oversight and robustness of the fraud environment.

•Drive escalations of critical breaches relating to fraud risk appetite, material fraud incidents, regulatory matters, systemic control weaknesses and customer harm themes, including applicable remedial actions, to the relevant committees and governance structures

•Design and embed an integrated fraud operating model with clear ownership across centralised fraud capabilities and the PPB business units, channels (incl. services provided to Business Bank and CIB).

•Lead the integrated fraud value chain for PPB, ensuring delivery of connected fraud outcomes and performance.

•Champion team culture and foster leadership visibility and impact to improve colleague experience and support, ensuring that teams are adequately capacitated, skilled, supervised and enabled through fit-for-purpose tools, procedures, quality assurance, workforce planning and productivity management.

•Set service-level expectations and monitor performance for fraud alerts, investigations, complaints, case resolution, recoveries, customer communication and escalation handling.

•Drive operational resilience by reducing backlogs, improving turnaround times, strengthening quality assurance, reducing colleague strain and building scalable operating capacity.

•Promote consistent handling of high-impact fraud incidents, including incident command, root-cause analysis, customer impact assessment, communications, remediation and applicable regulatory escalation.

•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.

•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

•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.

•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

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