Senior Manager – Digital Innovations, Digital Financial Services at KCB Bank Kenya

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

•  Responsible for the collection and funneling of partnerships and new ventures pitches from internal & external stakeholders; concepts & Ideas collection from customers, employees & partners across the group through both virtual and physical channels. Provide an open web portal for acceptance of innovation suggestions and formal submission of innovation pitches by customers and partners.
• Responsible for creating structure and guidance in new ventures management process; Provide guidance templates for business cases across all approval gates (Level 0 – for cost implications modelling and 1 for full GTSC review) prior to Group Technology Steering Committee (GTSC) presentations. Leverage innovation panel sessions split into internal & external. For external, invite product owner support (ensure right resources assigned to drive delivery). Provide an aggregated one portal view of all group innovation projects within the three-year innovation deployment pipeline. 
•  Drive new ventures management best practice sharing;  market & customer behavior research reviews, innovation best practice dissemination, innovation case studies, knowledge base management. Stewardship of knowledge base to Post Implementation Review.
• Ecosystem engagement – Fintechs proposals reviews & Elite club build, hackathons, VC unicorn partnerships & funding opportunities to scale innovations including social efforts & governance for large partners e.g. MasterCard etc
•  Scheduling new ventures and partnership panel meetings; leverage the gate process to optimize and rationalize Digital Financial Services (DFS) Innovation pipeline portfolio. Review new product / services concept pitches and maximize the banks innovation opportunities, enable effective cross or upselling of the existing product portfolio and define opportunity gaps for development based on customer needs, organization capability, market trends, and competitor activity amongst others 
• Serve as secretariat to the DFS Innovation Panel, ensuring all activities and initiatives align with the Group Innovation policy and process. 
• Guide internal & external new ventures partners on ideation and pitching of all new business propositions, business case development, scheduling of innovation panel presentations & preparing teams for Digital Centre of Excellence (DCoE) & GTSC presentation
• Work with the internal stakeholder teams on new ventures panel funneling and business case development of aligned products/services.
• Support product development teams internally and externally by ensuring guidance and clarity in development of business cases and business requirement documents (BRDs) presented at GTSC & DCOE
• Ensure compliance with all DFS policies and processes in the execution of all tasks by self and team

The successful candidate should meet the following minimum criteria:

• Have a Bachelor’s degree preferably in Computer Science; Technology, business or related field from a recognized institution.
• At least seven years managerial experience in leading new ventures and managing teams
• At least five  years relevant work experience with specific experience in:
  • New Ventures management in a digital financial services organization  .
  • Experience in business development and sales and marketing
  • Delivery of mobile financial products and services in a high growth environment
  • Building relationships, networks & Managing teams
  • Project Management and Relationship Management.
  • Experience in a Mobile Money or Payments or Lending Platform Support.