Country Risk Manager

Job title: Affiliate Country Chief Risk Officer / Country Head of Risk / Country Risk Manager

Role status: Senior-most independent risk executive and CRO-equivalent for the affiliate

Location: Relevant AWA affiliate

Geographic scope: The employing legal entity and its operations

Administrative/statutory reporting: Affiliate Managing Director, subject to local regulatory requirements

Functional reporting: Chief Risk Officer, Ghana & Anglophone West Africa, with alignment to relevant Group specialist risk functions

Board access: Direct and unrestricted access to the affiliate Board and relevant Board committees

Direct reports: Country risk, credit-risk and specialist risk personnel within the approved affiliate structure and subject to local regulatory requirements.

Independence: Independent of risk-taking business units and protected from responsibilities that would impair objective second-line challenge

Job purpose

•    To serve as the Chief Risk Officer-equivalent of the affiliate and lead the independent second-line risk-management function. The role provides the affiliate Managing Director, executive management and Board with a comprehensive, forward-looking and objective view of the entity’s financial and non-financial risk profile and ensures that strategy, growth and operations remain within approved risk appetite and applicable Group, regional and regulatory requirements.
•    The Affiliate CRO implements Group and AWA risk frameworks locally, maintains appropriate risk resources, expertise and controls, leads local regulatory and Board risk engagement, and owns country delivery of applicable Group, AWA or Country risk management initiatives. 
•    The Affiliate CRO to support the development and execution of sustainable business strategies by providing independent insight, challenge and forward-looking risk perspectives that enable profitable growth within approved risk appetite.

Mandate Boundaries

Key Responsibilities

1. Country executive and Board risk leadership

•    Serve as the principal risk adviser to the affiliate MD, executive management, Board and relevant Board committees.
•    Lead the independent second-line risk-management function and maintain sufficient stature, access and authority to challenge risk-taking decisions.
•    Provide independent risk opinions on strategy, budgets, growth plans, major transactions, products, partnerships, technology change and operating-model decisions.
•    Escalate material risks, breaches, control weaknesses and regulatory concerns to local and regional governance without delay.
•    Balance commercial enablement with prudential soundness, customer protection and franchise resilience.

2. ERMF, risk appetite and risk aggregation

•    Implement and maintain a comprehensive affiliate ERMF aligned with Group standards and local regulation.
•    Coordinate identification, assessment, measurement, monitoring, control and reporting of all material financial and non-financial risks.
•    Lead development and review of the country risk-appetite statement and recommend appropriate limits, triggers and KRIs.
•    Monitor breaches, exceptions, waivers and risk acceptances and ensure timely corrective action and escalation.
•    Maintain the country risk register, emerging-risk assessment and integrated view of the residual risk profile.
•    Conduct stress testing, scenario analysis and reverse stress testing proportionate to the affiliate’s risk profile.

3. Credit risk and asset quality

•    Provide independent review, challenge and approval of credit proposals within delegated authorities.
•    Oversee underwriting quality, policy compliance, portfolio performance, watchlists, Stage 2, NPLs, provisioning, IFRS 9 staging and material overlays.
•    Ensure effective early-warning, annual review, covenant monitoring and post-disbursement controls.
•    Monitor obligor, sector, sovereign, currency, product and connected-counterparty concentrations.
•    Identify likely future problem assets and escalate emerging deterioration early.
•    Promote efficient, first-time-right credit processes without compromising independent standards.

4. Collateral, remediation and recoveries

•    Oversee valuation, documentation, perfection, insurance, custody, monitoring, release and realisation of collateral.
•    Challenge data gaps, expired valuations, unperfected security and weak collateral coverage.
•    Oversee restructuring, rehabilitation, recovery, legal enforcement, write-offs and negotiated settlements.
•    Ensure problem assets have approved strategies, accountable owners, milestones, expected cash recoveries and escalation triggers.
•    Request regional specialist intervention where local capability or authority is insufficient.

5. Market, liquidity, capital and treasury risk

•    Monitor foreign-exchange, interest-rate, counterparty, liquidity, capital and market risks.
•    Provide independent challenge of Treasury positions, ALCO decisions, valuations, limits, funding concentrations and liquidity assumptions.
•    Monitor capital adequacy, liquidity buffers, stress outcomes, contingency plans and recovery options.
•    Ensure breaches are promptly reported and remediated and seek regional support for specialist analysis where required.

6. Operational risk, internal control and resilience

•    Implement an appropriate risk identification and remediation framework and ensure timeous risk identification and remediation. 
•    Implement the operational-risk framework, including RCSA, KRIs, loss events, incidents and near misses.
•    Challenge the quality and evidence supporting first-line risk and control assessments.
•    Coordinate critical-process reviews, control walkthroughs, thematic assessments and root-cause analysis.
•    Monitor fraud, conduct events, customer-impacting failures, business continuity, outsourcing and third-party dependencies.
•    Ensure risk acceptance is authorised, time-bound and supported by realistic mitigation.
•    Promote first-line ownership and avoid assuming business controls or Internal Audit responsibilities.

7. Technology, cyber, data, digital and model risk

•    Ensure technology, cyber, data, AI, digital, model, outsourcing and third-party risks are identified, assessed and reported.
•    Challenge technology change, system resilience, access controls, cyber incidents, business continuity and disaster recovery.
•    Maintain oversight of material models, including ownership, validation, performance, change and use.
•    Ensure risk and regulatory data are complete, accurate, timely, reconciled and traceable.
•    Escalate specialist concerns to regional or Group teams and track corrective action.

8. Compliance, financial crime, regulatory and sustainability risk

•    Lead risk-related engagement with the local regulator and ensure accurate, timely and transparent responses within the role’s mandate.
•    Collaborate with accountable specialist functions to monitor regulatory breaches, commitments, sanctions, AML/CFT, financial-crime and conduct risks.
•    Ensure credible, sustainable remediation action for regulatory and supervisory findings.
•    Implement environmental and social, climate, nature-related and sustainability requirements and escalate high-risk cases.
•    Identify conflicts between Group requirements and local law and seek formal resolution.

9. Governance, reporting and regional escalation

•    Prepare integrated country risk reports for local management, Board committees, regulators, the Ghana & AWA CRO and Group Risk.
•    Consolidate credit, remedial, market, liquidity, operational, control, technology, cyber, compliance and specialist-risk information into one country view.
•    Focus reporting on material changes, outlook, emerging risks, appetite pressure, management action, decisions required and 6-12 month vulnerabilities.
•    Ensure submissions are complete, internally consistent, evidence-based and locally approved.
•    Escalate risks requiring Regional or Group intervention and participate actively in the AWA Risk Leadership Forum.

10. Issue remediation and assurance

•    Maintain oversight of regulatory, audit, compliance, risk and control issues.
•    Ensure timeous issues closure and root cause remediation.
•    Challenge root cause, ownership, milestones, dependencies, target dates and proposed closure evidence.
•    Monitor repeat, overdue, reopened and retargeted findings and escalate persistent non-delivery.
•    Promote combined assurance and appropriate reliance while maintaining the independence of each assurance provider.
•    Confirm that closure is sustainable and reflected in the underlying process or control environment.

11. Root-Cause Elimination and Sustainable Remediation

•    Challenge management to address root causes rather than repeatedly remediate symptoms.
•    Monitor recurring losses, repeat findings and recurring operational incidents.
•    Quantify the recurring cost associated with weak controls and inefficient processes.
•    Promote sustainable solutions that reduce future remediation expenditure.
•    Ensure corrective actions produce measurable operational and financial benefits.

12. People, resources and risk culture

•    Lead, organise and develop the affiliate risk function and maintain adequate capacity, expertise, succession and segregation of duties.
•    Develop and implement an appropriate training plan for the risk function and ensure effective talent management and succession planning for critical skills 
•    Ensure the affiliate has the resources and controls required to assess and manage all material financial and non-financial risks.
•    Build first-line capability through guidance, training, risk champions and practical challenge.
•    Promote independence, professional courage, constructive challenge, ethical conduct and a no-surprises escalation culture.
•    Participate in regional peer reviews, training, attachments, talent and succession initiatives.

13. Strategy Development

•    Participate actively in the strategy formulation process at Ghana and AWA levels.
•    Assess strategic plans, business models, market-entry proposals, growth initiatives and investment decisions from a risk-return perspective.
•    Provide independent challenge regarding strategic assumptions, dependencies, execution risks and downside scenarios.
•    Ensure strategic objectives are aligned with: Risk Appetite Framework; capital and liquidity capacity; operational capability; regulatory requirements; technology capability; and organizational readiness. 
•    Identify strategic risks, emerging threats and external developments that could affect execution of business plans.

14. Supporting Sustainable Business Growth

•    Promote growth opportunities that generate attractive risk-adjusted returns.
•    Ensure pricing, portfolio composition and business expansion initiatives appropriately consider: expected losses; unexpected losses; capital consumption; concentration risk; liquidity implications; and operational capacity.
•    Advise management on opportunities to optimise growth while remaining within risk appetite.
•    Help management balance growth, profitability, resilience and regulatory expectations.
•    Promote use of risk-adjusted performance measures including RAROC, RORWA and economic capital considerations.

15. Strategy Execution Oversight

•    Monitor whether execution of approved strategy remains within approved risk appetite.
•    Identify emerging execution risks, delivery constraints and unintended consequences.
•    Challenge deviations from agreed strategic assumptions.
•    Assess whether management actions remain sufficient to deliver strategic objectives.
•    Escalate material threats to strategy execution to Executive Management and Boards.
•    Ensure lessons from strategic initiatives, product launches, acquisitions, partnerships and transformation programmes are incorporated into future planning.

16. Portfolio and Business Performance Challenge

•    Provide independent challenge regarding: growth concentrations; customer concentrations; industry concentrations; geographic concentrations; funding concentrations; and product concentrations.
•    Evaluate whether earnings growth is supported by appropriate risk management disciplines.
•    Monitor trends that may result in future asset-quality deterioration despite current revenue growth.
•    Provide forward-looking analysis on the sustainability of growth trajectories.

17. Process Efficiency and Simplification

•    Promote effective end-to-end process design across customer journeys, lending processes, operations, finance, treasury and support functions.
•    Challenge activities, controls and approval layers that create unnecessary complexity, delays or administrative burden.
•    Identify opportunities to simplify processes while maintaining appropriate levels of control and regulatory compliance.
•    Review critical business processes to identify: bottlenecks; duplication; excessive manual interventions; control redundancies; rework; avoidable exceptions; and customer friction.
•    Ensure risk and control frameworks support business agility rather than create unnecessary bureaucracy.

18. Cost of Risk and Cost of Control Optimization

•    Maintain visibility of both: the cost of risk services, operations and control.
•    Challenge operating practices where control activities consume disproportionate resources relative to the risks being mitigated.
•    Promote risk-based allocation of people, systems and control investments.
•    Evaluate whether control effectiveness can be enhanced while reducing operating costs.
•    Identify opportunities to reduce: operational losses; fraud losses; remediation costs; regulatory penalties; audit-related costs; manual processing costs; and exception-management costs.

19. Operating Model and Productivity Improvement

•    Assess the effectiveness and efficiency of risk, control and compliance operating models.
•    Recommend structural improvements that improve productivity while preserving independence and oversight effectiveness.
•    Support optimization of spans of control, resource deployment and specialist capability models across Ghana and AWA.
•    Identify opportunities for shared services, centralization, automation or specialist-resource pooling where appropriate.
•    Promote efficient use of regional expertise across affiliates.

20. Data, Technology and Automation Enablement

•    Promote automation of repetitive control and reporting activities.
•    Support development of integrated risk-data and management-information capabilities.
•    Reduce dependence on manual reporting and spreadsheet-based controls.
•    Encourage digitization of control monitoring, issue management, risk reporting and governance processes.
•    Evaluate technology investments from both a risk and productivity perspective.
•    Ensure technology initiatives deliver measurable improvements in: efficiency; control effectiveness; management information quality; and decision-making speed.

21. Productivity and Value Creation Oversight

•    Provide independent challenge regarding: operational productivity; process efficiency; resource utilization; service delivery effectiveness; cost management; and value-for-money outcomes.
•    Assess whether business growth is generating genuine value creation or simply increasing risk, complexity and operating cost.
•    Incorporate efficiency, productivity and resilience considerations into strategic decision-making and transformation programmes.
•    Support management in achieving profitable growth through better process design, stronger data, improved controls and more efficient operating practices.
Authority and decision rights
•    Access to all information, systems, records, employees and committees needed to discharge the mandate.
•    Direct escalation to the affiliate MD, affiliate Board or Board committee and the Ghana & AWA CRO.
•    Authority to challenge, require further analysis or mitigation, commission local reviews and recommend modification, deferral or rejection of activities outside appetite, subject to delegated authorities.
•    Authority to request regional or Group specialist support and to escalate unresolved local constraints.
•    Private access to the relevant Board committee where necessary to preserve independence.

Key performance outcomes

•    Affiliate risk profile maintained within approved appetite and material risks escalated early.
•    Improved asset quality, early warning, collateral, recoveries and concentration management.
•    Effective operational-risk, control, technology, cyber, data and resilience outcomes.
•    Reduced operational losses, fraud losses, control failures, repeat issues and regulatory breaches.
•    Market risk losses and Credit losses and NPLs managed within acceptable boundaries.
•    Timely and sustainable closure of regulatory, audit, risk and control issues.
•    Complete, accurate, forward-looking and timely Board, regulatory and regional reporting.
•    Effective local implementation of Group/AWA standards and risk management initiatives.
•    Adequate risk-function capacity, capability, succession and independence.
•    Strong first-line ownership and affiliate risk culture.

Efficiency and Productivity Measures

•    Reduction in manual processing.
•    Straight-through-processing rates.
•    Cost-to-income improvements attributable to process redesign.
•    Reduction in operational losses.
•    Reduction in fraud losses.
•    Reduction in repeat findings.
•    Reduction in overdue remediation actions.
•    Reduction in exception volumes.
•    Reduction in customer-impacting process failures.
•    Reduction in time-to-credit decision.
•    Reduction in turnaround times for key customer journeys.
•    Increase in automation rates.
•    Improvement in data-quality scores.
•    Improvement in technology availability and resilience.
•    Improvement in productivity per risk, control and compliance resource.

Qualifications 

•    Advanced degree or equivalent in finance, economics, banking, accounting, risk management, business administration or a related field.
•    Relevant professional certification such as FRM, PRM, CFA, ACCA, CIA, or equivalent will be an added advantage.

Experience

•    Minimum of 10 years relevant banking experience in Risk Management, Credit Risk, Internal Control, Audit, Compliance, or related disciplines.
•    At least 3-5 years in a senior management role.
•    Strong knowledge of Enterprise Risk Management frameworks and banking regulations.
•    Experience in credit risk assessment and portfolio management.
•    Strong senior banking and risk-management experience across several risk disciplines.
•    Experience advising executive management and Boards and engaging regulators.
•    Demonstrated ability to lead teams, exercise independent judgement, challenge constructively and drive remediation.
•    Sufficient stature, credibility and professional independence to perform the CRO-equivalent role in the affiliate.
•    Sound understanding of Basel principles and risk governance standards.
•    Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
•    Ability to influence and challenge business decisions constructively.
•    High level of integrity, professionalism, and independent judgment.