Sylvester Ekpenyong

I am a Senior Business Systems & Project Manager (holding both CBAP and PMP credentials) with a 13-year track record handling complex banking tech, backend payments, and data migrations. My core focus is sitting right between software developers and senior business stakeholders translating messy processes into solid technical requirements. Most of my recent work involves moving legacy systems over to the ISO 20022 messaging standard, tightening up transactional compliance frameworks like AML/KYC, and writing SQL queries or building Power BI dashboards to track financial performance data.

Payments Systems Analyst - Standard Bank

(2024-10)

• Spent my time running requirement workshops and alignment sessions across business lines to plan out upcoming enterprise payment integrations.
• Took charge of mapping out how data moves across our cross-border payment rails, keeping our architecture tightly aligned with the new ISO 20022 messaging format.
• Drafted the actual user stories, project scope rules, and technical acceptance criteria used by the dev team during active sprints.
• Took ownership of the final UAT validation phases, tracking software bugs and reviewing system fixes before giving the green light for deployment.
• Used Postman and targeted SQL data queries to test backend APIs, ensuring system integrations didn't drop data.
• Managed to transition our foundational payment infrastructure over to compliance with modern global standards without interrupting daily transfers.
• Cleaned up systemic communication gaps between the development side and our QA teams, cutting manual system validation times by 20%.

Senior Payments Analyst - Momentum Ltd | SARB

(2023-10 - 2024-09)

• Designed the actual rules and backend logic for our automated AML/KYC compliance tools and live sanctions screening pipelines.
• Investigated and fixed persistent translation bugs occurring when converting cross-border transaction files from old MT formats into MX messaging.
• Brought legal counsel, compliance managers, and system developers into the same room during JAD sessions to hammer out shifting regulatory rules.
• Audited data architecture maps to ensure our compliance reporting pipelines remained secure and accurate.
• Collaborated directly with engineering leads to automate our mandatory regulatory reporting cycles.
• Fixed a series of translation errors in the MT/MX processing layer, boosting cross-border reconciliation accuracy by 30%.
• Identified operational control vulnerabilities and reworked transaction pathways to cut institutional risk exposure.

Senior Solutions Analyst - Absa Group | South Africa

(2022-10 - 2023-09)

• Wrote custom SQL scripts and built localized Power BI dashboards to give the liquidity management team instant visibility over account matching.
• Analyzed how teams processed daily reports, actively stripping out redundant data entry loops to clean up the operational pipeline.
• Prepared, organized, and validated historical transaction data packages to get the department ready for external regulatory audits.
• Handled the heavy lifting for project discovery: computed business case realities, outlined project scopes, and assessed architectural impacts.
• Replaced a highly manual, spreadsheet-driven tracking system with an automated reporting tool, saving the operations team 20 hours every week.
• Delivered perfectly clean, error-free data sets for our annual operations audit, resulting in a flawless compliance rating.

Consultant – Product Owner - Business Data & Information Systems

(2021-07 - 2022-09)

• Dug deep into huge, messy enterprise datasets using statistical tools to extract the underlying trends leadership needed for strategic adjustments.
• Redesigned how data was collected internally, fixing faulty coding inputs and dramatically improving overall data quality.
• Built and executed end-to-end data migration plans, focusing heavily on secure data masking and data cleaning before transferring records to relational databases.
• Owned the technical product backlog, refining high-level company goals into practical, bite-sized tasks for development cycles.
• Oversaw the successful migration of 3 million customer profiles from legacy infrastructure into clean SQL/Oracle platforms with zero system down-time.
• Boosted dev team velocity by 50% simply by rewriting vague backlog requirements into highly descriptive, clear user stories.

Consultant – Senior Business Analyst - Nedbank / Cruze Control

(2017-06 - 2021-06)

• Ran major business process re-engineering programs, documenting current state and target state workflows using formal BPMN guidelines.
• Gathered technical needs from business users to draft highly descriptive functional and non-functional system documents.
• Built core UAT testing blueprints, managing daily defect triage meetings to prioritize what software fixes needed to go live first.
• Rolled out 10 distinct process optimization initiatives that collectively cut down business expenses by $100,000 every year.
• Created a unified requirements tracking framework that prevented miscommunication, lowering engineering rework by 10%.

Senior Business / Systems Analyst - Nedbank Group

(2015-05 - 2017-05)

• Served as an internal technology consultant, analyzing corporate systems against software procurement plans to ensure technical tools matched scaling goals.
• Drafted deep-dive business cases, step-by-step user operational guides, and architectural diagrams to ensure clean operational changes.

Project Systems & Analysis - ESKOM Holdings PMT

(2013 - 2014)

Business Analyst / Technical Scoping - Gemcom Software PMO

(2012 - 2012)

Systems Analytics & Mapping - SASOL Technology PMO

(2005 - 2011)

BA (Hons) - Information Management - University of Johannesburg

Certificate - Knowledge Management - University of South Africa

National Diploma - University of Benin