Chief Risk Officer at Paga Nigeria

Paga is a licensed financial services company and a leading payments company in Nigeria with a massive transformative purpose - to make it simple for one billion people to access and use money. It was founded on the simple belief that the ubiquity of mobile phones can be leveraged in building an ecosystem that enables people to digitally send and receive money and creating simple financial access for everyone.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Chief Risk Officer

Location: Yaba, Lagos
Employment Type: Full-time

About the Role

• The Chief Risk Officer is responsible for overseeing various risk management and compliance functions and ensuring that appropriate procedures, protocols, and strategies are implemented to minimize risk and protect the organization.
• This candidate will be a partner to Leadership to ensure appropriate implementation of risk management and compliance controls while performing governance and oversight activities to assess the business culture and performance related to Risk and Compliance with Enterprise Policies and Standards.

Primary Responsibilities

• To set a risk and compliance framework for the company in line with Paga’s strategy.
• To take overall responsibility for the advice, management and development of Paga’s risk and compliance systems company
• To advise the Management Board in the implementation of risk and compliance matters across the Company.
• To oversee the preparation of compliance reports for the relevant regulatory
• Present to the Management Board monthly and quarterly on risk and compliance issues including any
• To work closely with other members of the Senior Management Team in defining the company’s strategy and planning while considering key risks.
• To manage the Risk & Compliance team and provide leadership and supervision to them and their work.
• To be the responsible individual for all policies on risk and compliance within the Office Procedure Manual, particularly the process of annual review – proposing improvements to manage risk.
• To undertake, oversee or manage as appropriate and propose improvements in all applicable risk and compliance processes.
• To ensure the company strategy, processes and compliance requirements have appropriate risk assessment system and to monitor and ensure the robust management of each individual risks notified under that system.
• To ensure those risks are appropriately populated in the various risk registers and appropriate actions taken to ensure the effective management of risk matter, including consulting the Management Board on high-risk areas, Reputational Risk & complex cases.
• Provide guidance and recommendations on corrective actions or risk mitigation strategies to remediate non-compliant situations to Senior Management.
• Monitor the implementation progress of action plans designed to correct incidents of noncompliance or potential issues in policies, systems.
• To ensure appropriate corrective actions or risk mitigations strategies are implemented fully within the required timeframe.
• To investigate all breaches and near breaches of all regulations.
• To lead the Risk Units partnership with Paga’s Product Management, Application Development and Legal
• To perform Regulatory Compliance Reviews to evaluate and ensure the appropriate identification of regulatory responsibility by the assessment of product functionality and associated controls.
• To provide support and as appropriate facilitate the engagement with Internal Audit, performing pre-audit activities, assisting with management responses, remediation plan development and continued engagement with remediation of issues until closure.
• To participate in the Third-Party Risk Management activities and meetings to help ensure timely closure of outstanding third-party management issues; evaluate third party risk and assist with escalation where needed.
• To support corporate-wide risk initiatives to ensure Paga implements required changes to meet internal and external mandates or certifications (e.g., PCIDSS, ISO27001, Enterprise Business Continuity initiatives, Cyber security efforts).
• To provide oversight on the company’s AML/CFT program, Data protection Program and any other applicable regulatory programs.
• Ensure all applicable risk and compliance training and applicable regulatory awareness training is delivered effectively and to all identified users in accordance with the Management Board requirements, delivering such training personally as appropriate.
• To review the conclusions of the recent externally commissioned consultants’ reports on AML, data protection compliance – to review progress made on implementation and taking appropriate action to complete that process.
• To manage the relationship with our regulators, external auditors, external lawyers, law enforcement and any other applicable external parties.

Knowledge and Skill Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in an analytical field such as Engineering, Finance, Computer Science, Mathematics, Economics, Legal etc
• At least 10 years relevant work experience
• Suitable candidate must have either of CFE, CAMS or FRM Certifications
• Knowledgeable in technology
• Experience in a highly regulated environment.
• Knowledge of risk management, Information Security, Cyber Security, Business Continuity, and Auditing.
• Must have completed the mandatory NYSC
• Previous experience in a risk management role within financial services ideally within a platform and product led environment
• Excellent knowledge of industry best risk management practice.
• Ability to understand and articulate the commercial benefits of effective risk management
• Makes commercial business decisions and is resilient in the face of resistance.
• Works collaboratively with Management Board and Senior Management to resolve conflicts to acceptable outcomes for all.
• Judgement to balance commercial and compliance risks to achieve positive outcomes.
• Ability to work with the business to achieve its goals within the relevant regulatory regimes.
• Proven “people skills” in terms of recruiting, appraising, developing, and motivating staff.
• Proven ability to deal with confidential matters and with discretion.
• Excellent relationship management and influencing skills
• Ability to build supportive relationships with different groups across the firm and externally.
• Ability to analyse, present and report risk management data to senior stakeholders
• Provides strong leadership, mentoring and coaching within the team to develop skills and expertise.
• Ability to adapt and respond to change.

Key Competence:

• Initiative
• Take ownership for workload and is proactive in approach
• Multitask and manage competing priorities
• Flexibility
• Strong communication skills
• Demonstrate sufficient self-awareness to identify personal strengths and areas for development
• Ability to analyse and problem solve
• Professional manner
• Attention to detail.

Application Closing Date
Not Specified.