Risk Specialist – Business Resilience Management (role size N) at Old Mutual (2019-10 – 2023-09)
Provide specialist assistance to Business Continuity Co-ordinators and Business Continuity Managers (across Old Mutual South Africa and Rest of Africa) to ensure that Risk processes occur at a business unit level. To embed Business Resilience across various domains as per key responsibilities:
- Build and maintain relationships with business stakeholders
- Performing Risk and Threat Assessments
- Perform Business Impact Assessments – (ensuring dependencies are accurately captured)
- Building Business Continuity Plans and conducting annual reviews; workshops
- Assessing and raising risks and threats that emerge from workshops
- Interact with IT teams to drive alignment between the DR plan and business requirements
- Testing Business Resilience Plans (including Business Continuity Plans and Crisis Management Plans
- Create testing documentation
- Track implementation of controls and action plans to mitigate resilience gaps
- Assist business in the tiering of products and services
- Reviewing Business Resilience documents
- Conduct Policy Attestations with business
- Facilitating updates with business when required
- Reviewing the Business Resilience Policy and making recommendations for updates when required
- Assistance to business unit management where required to embed Business Resilience into the organization
- Co-ordinate Business Resilience planning and updating in-country
- Prepare and compile relevant documents and reports, ie. Quarterly Business Resilience Status Reports
- Prepare and compile relevant documents and reports for Resilience Forums and Steering Committees
- Conduct training on the BCM Toolkit
- Maintain the BCMS
- Participate in quarterly Business Resilience Forums
- Facilitating awareness sessions with the business
- Assist in the testing and validation of business units recovery strategies
- Tracking of control actions/activities implementation to mitigate risk within business
Business Continuity Management Relationship Manager at Absa Bank Limited (2008-01 – 2019-09)
Responsible for embedding of Business Resilience programs across Absa Group Limited which includes Business Continuity Assurance for various business units and providing solid relationship management. Responsible for support and assistance to the various business units across multiple domains to embed business continuity management.
Roles held: Relationship Manager: Absa Technology, Chief Risk Office, Chief Security Office, Wealth and Investment Banking (2017 – current)
• Relationship Manager: Absa Corporate and Investment Banking (2015 - 2017)
• Relationship Manager: Barclays and the Rest of Africa (2013 – 2015)
• Relationship Manager: Absa Retail Banking Services (2011 – 2012)
• Relationship Manager: Absa Services Cluster (2008 – 2010)
- Crisis Management
- Provisioning and Recovery Strategies
- Governance/Reporting
- Cross functional Education and Awareness Risk Management across multiple domains
- Recovery Plan Development
- Documentation and Maintenance
- Business Validation and Testing to ensure that Business Units are sufficiently prepared to respond in the event of a disruptions
- Conduct BIA together with business in order to create Business Continuity Plans
- Establish and manage relationships with stakeholders at various levels, provide strategic advice to senior management with regards to business continuity planning and solutions
- Maintain the BCMS
- Participate in quarterly Business Resilience Forums
- Facilitating awareness sessions with the business
- Assist in the testing and validation of business units recovery strategies
- Tracking of control actions/activities implementation to mitigate risk within business
- Provide leadership, strategic direction and guidance to business in managing Business Continuity in areas of deployment and maintenance of plans and validation of recovery solutions
- Impart knowledge and experience to affect the raising of business continuity awareness and to highlight potential threats or vulnerabilities
- Influence and provide input into proposed business recovery strategies and solutions
- Promote a positive, proactive business continuity culture across the organisation and embed business continuity principles within business-as-usual processes
- Manage risks, issues, and audit observations to satisfactory conclusion, producing dispensations, waivers, breaches where non-compliance to minimum standards exists
- Interface with change, problem, incident, project and new business experts to provide business continuity direction, guidance and/or support
- Measure capability and performance and communicate to Group business continuity quality assurance function as required
- Monitor compliance with applicable Business Unit policies and standards in respect of business continuity management
- Monitor progress against action plans
- Review the impact of current and future regulatory requirements for business continuity management
- Assist with drawing up Crisis Management scenarios and assist with facilitation of crisis management exercises
- Ensure that combined monthly scorecards delivered by and to the various sectors/business units are an accurate reflection of the business' recoverability
- Apply and enforce Absa's policies and procedures for the BCM methodology to all areas of responsibility
- Run specific additional projects and adhoc services within the BCM office (upon request from management)
- Assess the suitability of the Bank's recovery strategy in line with any changes/projects within the sectors/business units. Where strategies differ from current capability, consult and involve the other BCM Office teams (including the WAR Operations and Education & Awareness teams)
- Ensure testing/validation is effectively managed and executed for the various sectors/business units in line with Absa BCM policies, testing framework revisions and audit requirements by interacting with business and the BCM Testing Manager
- Interact with IT teams to drive alignment between the Disaster Recovery Plan and Business requirements
- Ensure that Education and Awareness to ensure training is effectively managed and executed for the various sectors/business units in line with Absa BCM policies and audit requirements
- Perform periodic interviews/surveys with the various sectors/business units to ascertain levels of service satisfaction for services provided by Relationship Managers and the BCM office. Prepare responses to issues identified and notify the Head: Business Continuity Management if required
- Attend the Cluster monthly forums as well as the COO forums with the Group Head - BCM
- Support and Review BCM dashboards from the sectors/business units, and highlight key areas of concern/issues within the Bank to the Head: Business Continuity Management
- Prepare a monthly report on summary of progress made on sector/business unit activities and any key issues raised
- Prepare a monthly report on compliance by business. This report forms part of the BCM Risk Forum Pack for Steerco
- Provide regular and timely reports to key senior stakeholders and other interested parties, on progress and potential issues with the business continuity plans and solutions
- Highlight and escalate prospective weaknesses identified during course of day-to-day work with relevant stakeholders and accountable executives, as appropriate and in consultation with Head of Business Continuity Management
- Execute and implement BCM related projects as appropriate
- Ensure governance and compliance is maintained in all BCM related projects
- Assisting with User Acceptance Training for new BCM Tool
- Provide training to business on their roles and on the applicable systems to be used
- Assist in drawing up Testing Guide for business
- Facilitate/Conduct quarterly Forums for business
HCD Administrator (Legislative & Statutory) at Lithalelanga Technologies (Pty) Ltd (2007-08 – 2007-12)
Executive Assistant to Group CEO at Lithalelanga Technologies (Pty) Ltd (2006-01 – 2007-08)
English Teacher at SDA English Language Institute of South Korea (2003-01 – 2005-10)
Administrative Officer at Fast Function (Events Management) (2002-02 – 2002-12)
