Principal Financial Crime Officer

Job Description

The purpose of the Principal Financial Crime Officer is to provide advanced advisory, oversight, and technical expertise on the full spectrum of financial crime compliance, including anti-money laundering, combating the financing of terrorism, sanctions compliance, fraud prevention and fulfilling the Section 42A of the FIC Amendment Act role of ensuring the effectiveness of the Financial Crime stream. The role plays a key part in designing, implementing, and refining systems and controls across due diligence and reporting. It supports the integration of a risk-based approach to financial crime governance, strengthens awareness across the DBSA, and contributes to meeting both domestic and international regulatory obligations. This role contributes to safeguarding the DBSA’s integrity, reputation, and regulatory standing through strong financial crime prevention and detection capability.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Financial Crime Focus

• Contribute to the development and implementation of a financial crime compliance strategy to manage and mitigate financial crime risks, including AML, fraud prevention, and sanctions compliance.
• Develop risk-based financial crime policies, procedures, and control frameworks to ensure appropriate controls are in place.
• Integrate financial crime 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 financial crime risks among employees.
• Continuously review and enhance the financial crime framework, technologies and methodologies to reflect changes in regulatory expectations and emerging risks.

2. Lead Advisory and Oversight of Financial Crime Compliance

• Provide expert guidance on financial crime legislation, regulatory expectations, and institutional obligations.
• Support implementation of a risk-based financial crime compliance framework across business units.
• Advise on high-risk clients, transactions, geographies, and sectors requiring enhanced controls or approvals.
• Provide input and support to group and divisional compliance initiatives.
• Verify that all financial crime activities are undertaken for all areas and projects of the DBSA.
• Partner with relevant stakeholders across the Bank to effectively manage financial crime risk.

3. Financial Crime Risk Assessment

• Perform regular Bankwide risk assessments to identify potential financial crime risks within the organisation.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of existing controls and develop continuous improvement processes and frameworks across the Bank’s business units and operations.
• Present risk assessment reports to senior management and the Board, highlighting key findings and recommendations.
• Provide insights and advice on high-risk clients, transactions, geographies, and sectors requiring enhanced due diligence, monitoring, or escalation.

4. Drive Know Your Customer (KYC) and Enhanced Due Diligence

• Provide oversight of client onboarding and ongoing due diligence, applying a risk-based approach.
• Lead complex enhanced due diligence reviews and recommend mitigations for clients with heightened financial crime risk.
• Advise on appropriate documentation, verification, and ongoing monitoring standards.

5. Monitoring and Assessing Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Sanctions Controls

• Execute anti-money laundering activities, transaction reviews, and analysis of suspicious indicators.
• Conduct screening processes for politically exposed persons, sanctions, and watchlists.
• Work with internal teams to respond to alerts, investigate anomalies, and escalate suspicious activity reports.
• Interact with internal and external bodies to identify and manage financial crime risk.

6. Communication and Awareness Initiatives

• Design and deliver financial crime 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 financial crime risks and promote a strong culture of compliance across the institution.

7. Governance and Reporting

• Review and respond to regulatory queries, internal audits, or ethics-related investigations relating to financial crime.
• Lead the preparation of submissions to compliance and risk management committees from a financial crime perspective.
• Implement corrective actions and drive continuous improvement in financial crime controls.
• Maintain audit readiness through regular self-assessments and control testing.
• Oversee compliance with financial crime legislation, regulatory expectations, and institutional obligations relating to anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions compliance.
• Analyse trends and patterns in financial crimes and integrate findings into the broader compliance monitoring framework and governance processes.
• Prepare and present financial crime compliance submissions, reports, and insights to relevant compliance, risk, and governance committees to support informed decision-making.
• Draft internal reports, regulatory returns, and risk committee inputs to anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance.

8. Stakeholder Management

• Partner with internal stakeholders across the Bank to identify, assess, and manage financial crime risks in line with regulatory and governance requirements.
• Liaise with external regulators, law enforcement, and industry bodies as required.
• Represent the bank in financial crime forums and working groups to align expectations, gather insights, and ensure successful outcomes.

9. 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 financial crime risk assessments, including timely identification and mitigation of key risks.
• Accuracy and completeness of politically exposed persons screening, know your client documentation, and enhanced due diligence reports.
• Accuracy and efficiency of AML screening and transaction monitoring, including the number of suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed and false positive rates.
• Compliance rate with KYC/CDD requirements, including completion of periodic reviews and updates of customer risk profiles.
• Quality and timeliness of financial crime reporting 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 financial crime controls, including automation of monitoring systems and adoption of analytics tools.
• Management of team performance, talent