The purpose of the Principal Compliance Officer is to provide advanced compliance support across the institution, with a focus on embedding a robust compliance culture, monitoring regulatory adherence, and supporting ethical conduct. The role identifies, analyses, and responds to regulatory risks and compliance gaps across business processes, products, and transactions. The role contributes to policy interpretation, compliance advisory, and the design of controls to manage regulatory obligations. This role further contributes to protecting DBSA’s integrity, maintaining regulatory compliance, and promoting responsible conduct across the organisation.
KEY PERFORMANCE AREAS
Strategic Compliance Focus
- Contribute to the development and implementation of a compliance strategy to manage and mitigate compliance risks and breaches.
- Integrate compliance risk into broader compliance monitoring plans and governance framework.
- Foster a culture of compliance and ethical conduct within the organisation by promoting awareness and understanding of compliance among employees.
- Oversee the implementation of compliance policies across the organisation, ensuring that all employees understand and adhere to these policies.
- Continuously review and enhance the compliance framework, technologies and methodologies to reflect changes in regulatory expectations and emerging risks.
- Guide the team on developments in legislation, regulatory guidance, and industry practices, and proactively recommend operational changes to address the potential impact of regulatory changes on the organisation and its business units.
Assessment and Management of Compliance Risk
- Interpret applicable laws, regulations, and codes of practice to advise internal stakeholders on compliance obligations.
- Guide business units in the implementation of compliance requirements across operational, investment, and support functions.
- Support the development of a culture of compliance through practical, solution-oriented advice.
- Identify and assess the regulatory universe and draft compliance risk management plans for high-risk legislation.
- Monitor compliance and contribute to reducing the compliance risk exposure of the Bank.
Monitor Regulatory and Internal Compliance
- Conduct reviews of business processes, documentation, and records to assess levels of regulatory compliance.
- Identify potential breaches, emerging risks, and control weaknesses, and recommend corrective actions.
- Track and monitor implementation of regulatory changes and internal policies.
- Interact with internal and external bodies such as Risk Management, Internal Audit, Legal Services, Regulators and Industry Bodies to identify and manage compliance risk
- Monitor compliance functions are undertaken for all areas and projects of the Bank.
- Provide input into high-level compliance and audit reports in respect of audit issues/matters for the Audit & Risk Committee and other governance structures.
Develop and Implement Compliance Policies & Frameworks
- Contribute to the design and updating of compliance policies, procedures, and guidelines.
- Participate in compliance risk assessments and control testing to enhance risk mitigation.
- Guide business units in maintaining compliance registers and reporting systems.
- Advise business units of compliance best practices and new developments.
Communication and Awareness Initiatives
- Design and deliver compliance training programmes tailored to the needs of the Bank.
- Promote a culture of compliance and ethical behaviour across the Bank.
- Manage the review of training content and regularly update to reflect regulatory changes and emerging threats.
- Approve and facilitate training and awareness initiatives to strengthen staff understanding of compliance and promote a strong culture of compliance across the institution.
Governance and Reporting
- Prepare for and respond to internal and external audits and regulatory inspections.
- Implement corrective actions and drive continuous improvement in compliance controls.
- Maintain audit readiness through regular self-assessments and control testing.
- Analyse trends and patterns and integrate findings into the broader compliance monitoring framework and governance processes.
- Develop reports and dashboards tailored to the specific needs of stakeholders, presenting data in a clear, concise, and actionable manner using visualisations and other aids as necessary.
- Prepare and present compliance submissions, reports, and insights to relevant compliance, risk, and governance committees to support informed decision-making.
- Manage and verify responses to regulatory queries, internal audits, ethics investigations, and assurance reviews relating to compliance.
- Collaborates with legal, ethics, financial crime, and business units to promote integrated compliance outcomes.
- Provide reports to ensure that compliance risks are considered and dealt with effectively and promptly.
Stakeholder Management
- Partner with internal stakeholders across the Bank to identify, assess, and manage compliance risks in line with regulatory and governance requirements.
- Liaise with external regulators, law enforcement, and industry bodies as required.
- Represent the bank in compliance forums and working groups to align expectations, gather insights, and ensure successful outcomes.
People Management
- Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team, fostering a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning to maximise individual and collective potential.
- Drive talent development initiatives, including coaching, performance management, and career pathing, to build and retain a skilled and motivated team.
- Provide direction and management to the Division, to enable strategy execution.
- Attract, retain, develop talent and ensure succession planning and sufficient capacity and capability in all critical functions, supporting diversity strategies and initiatives as well.
- Promote DBSA values and a culture of high performance through implementing performance management in line with the planned strategic objectives, goals, quality standards and agreed key performance measures using sound performance management principles.
- Contribute to building synergies & cooperation across functions in the DBSA.
Key Measurements of Outputs
- Effectiveness and coverage of compliance risk assessments, including timely identification and mitigation of key risks
- Reduction in the incidence and severity of regulatory breaches, and effectiveness and timeliness of remediation actions implemented.
- Quality, relevance, and risk impact of compliance reviews, assessments, and advisory interventions conducted across the organisation.
- Quality of regulatory guidance provided, and impact of compliance training and awareness initiatives on improving compliance culture and understanding.
- Quality and timeliness of reports to senior management, governance committees, and regulators.
- Audit readiness and outcomes, including the number of audit findings and the effectiveness of corrective actions implemented.
- Training coverage and effectiveness, measured by completion rates and post-training assessment scores across business units.
- Level of digital enablement in compliance controls, including automation of monitoring systems and adoption of analytics tools.
- Management of team performance, talent development, and succession planning using the performance management system.
INTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIP (*The list is not exhaustive)
- Risk, Management and Exco Committees
- Group Risk, Legal and Internal Audit
EXTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIP (*The list is not exhaustive)
QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE
Minimum Qualification
- A Postgraduate Degree in Law, LLB, Compliance, Business Administration, Risk Management
- Accredited / Certified Member of the Compliance Institute of Southern Africa (CISA)
- A certification in compliance management
Minimum Experience
- A minimum of 10 years in a compliance or regulatory risk function.
- Proven experience in the end-to-end compliance management
- Experience in interpreting legislation and applying compliance frameworks across business units.
- Experience in monitoring, advisory, or control development functions.
- Familiarity with regulatory bodies such as the Prudential Authority, Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), etc.
- Proven experience in end-to-end compliance management.
- Deep knowledge of regulatory requirements, industry practice & risk management.
Desirable Requirements
- Familiarity with public sector and developmental finance regulatory frameworks and infrastructure-specific risks
- Experience within a financial institution, development finance institution, or a state-owned entity.
TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES
Risk Response and Reporting
- Develop and implement appropriate risk mitigation for significant and unusual risks to which the business is exposed.
- Provide advice on business continuity management mechanisms, define appropriate risk responses for reasonably foreseeable emergency scenarios and events.
- Design and implement risk reporting systems and communicate to executive management risk processes and results, including recommendations for improvement.
Project Management
- Initiates project plans and secures resources for projects that span area or department boundaries.
- Uses estimating techniques and develops project risk management approaches.
- Has an in-depth and practical understanding of how to maximise the effectiveness of project teams.
Solution Focus
- Identifies complex problems based on a broad range of factors, many of which are ambiguous or difficult to define.
- While remaining guided by organisational values, identifies optimal solutions, thinking first in terms of possible approaches and flexibilities in the system vs.
- blind adherence to rules or procedures.
- Evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of solutions after they have been implemented and identifies needed changes.
Compliance Risk Management
- Establishing and embedding FIC Awareness in the DBSA and its Business Units.
- Identify and assess regulatory universes and draft compliance risk management plans for high-risk legislation.
- Interact with internal and external bodies such as Risk Management, Internal Audit, Legal Services, Regulators and Industry Bodies to identify and manage
- compliance risk.
Compliance Risk Monitoring
- Compiles Business Unit-specific plan that ensures that the Business Units comply with the applicable legislative requirements and regulations.
- Compiles submissions to relevant Regulators.
- Reviews and monitors compliance processes and compliance with regulations and legislation.
- Establishes processes to identify instances of noncompliance and reports on non-compliance and any process deviations to senior management.
- Reports as necessary to ensure that compliance risks are considered and dealt with effectively and in a timely manner. All risk reporting must be of the highest quality.
- Works with other risk officers to share information and ensure uniformity in compliance risk management approaches and mitigations.
- Monitors the external environment to determine emerging and unknown compliance risks, determine the impact on the Bank and facilitate communication to various Stakeholders.
- Reports on the status of compliance to the Head of Compliance in accordance with the compliance universe.
Development of Policies/Regulations
- Can develop advanced policies or regulations effectively with little supervision.
- Performs comparative analysis of policies to identify new policy requirements.
- Effectively obtains approval from senior managers or key stakeholders for new policies or regulations
- Exercises independent judgment regarding the development of policies.
- Understands principles of compliance and regulations and provides guidance on operational compliance of policies and regulations.
- Enforces rather than oversees the regulatory role, with assistance from subordinates.
Detail Orientation
- Quickly identifies relevant and irrelevant information to support accurate decision making.
- Maps out all the logistics and details of a situation to ensure smooth and flawless implementation.
- Consistently identifies all relevant details that are not obvious in complex situations.
- Requires the highest standards for accuracy and quality for their work.
- Establishes processes to ensure accuracy and quality of services delivered by the team.
Written Communication
- Understands that different writing styles are required for different documents or audiences.
- Write effective correspondence, prepare questions and reports, statements of circumstance and briefing notes.
- Reviews others’ documents for clarity and impact.
- Has a solid mastery of writing principles such as grammar, sentence construction, etc.
Verbal Communication
- Able to communicate complex problems or concepts by making them simple and understandable for others.
- Adapts language to the level of the audience in order to ensure that the message has a positive impact and is interesting to the audience.
- Is articulate, demonstrates a wide range of vocabulary, and is confident when talking to large/high-level audiences.
Presentation Skills
- Can reinforce key presentation points with examples.
- Is able to translate technical terminology into language understandable to the audience.
- Has insight into the audience’s behaviour and motivation and responds appropriately and professionally, adapting communication style as appropriate.
BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES
Analytical Thinking
- Identifies multiple elements of a problem and breaks down each of those elements in detail, showing causal relationships between them.
- Uses several analytical techniques to identify several solutions and weighs the value of each.
Attention to Detail
- Monitors the quality of others' work.
- Checks to see that procedures are followed by others.
- Keeps clear details records of own and/or other activities.
Integrity
- Is willing to end a business relationship because it was associated with unethical business practices.
- Is capable of challenging senior management (in an appropriate manner) in order to act on espoused values.
Decisiveness
- Makes timely decisions about complex issues even when some information is missing.
- Makes decisions and stands by them even when they are controversial or unpopular.
- Grasps critical business opportunities when they arise by making timely decisions.
Information Seeking and Analysis
- Analyses relationships among several parts of a problem or situation.
- Anticipates obstacles and thinks ahead about next steps in detail.
Customer Service Orientation
- Tries to understand the underlying needs of customers and matches these needs to available or customised products and services.
- Adapts processes and procedures to meet ongoing customer needs.
- Utilises the feedback received by customers to develop new and/or improve existing services/products that relate to their ongoing needs.
- Thinks of new ways to align DBSA’s offerings with future customer needs.
- The KPA’s, competencies and relationships listed in this document are not exhaustive, and the incumbent will be expected to undertake additional duties within their capacity to meet the needs of business and/or the business unit.
