Principal: Strategic Portfolio Management

1 week ago

Midrand, Gauteng, South Africa DBSA Full time R1 200 000 - R2 400 000 per year
Closing Date
2025/11/19

Reference Number
DBS

Job Title
Principal: Strategic Portfolio Management

Job Grade
00

Job Type Classification
Permanent

Location - Town / City
Midrand

Location - Province
Gauteng

Location - Country
South Africa

Job Profile (Downloadable)
kb) - 11/4/2025 10:38:28 AM

Job Description

The Principal: Strategic Portfolio Management plays a critical role in enhancing the DBSA's ability to manage credit and
enterprise-level risks across its investment portfolio. This role ensures that the credit and investment activities of the Bank
are aligned with its strategic objectives, risk appetite, and developmental mandate. Operating at the intersection of
portfolio analytics, enterprise risk strategy, and governance, the role supports the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) in promoting
portfolio resilience, capital efficiency, and credit soundness.

Key Responsibilities

Key Performance Areas:

Formulate and Implement Enterprise Portfolio Risk Strategy
  • Design and implement a comprehensive framework for managing credit and portfolio risks, aligned with the
    DBSA's risk appetite and strategic objectives.
  • Translate enterprise risk strategy into portfolio-level credit risk policies, sectoral limits, and concentration controls.
  • Proactively identify emerging risks and credit trends that may impact the portfolio, including sectoral, regional, or
    borrower-specific vulnerabilities.
  • Advise the CRO and relevant committees on credit and portfolio risk trends, exposures, and strategic
    adjustments.
Strengthen Credit Portfolio Oversight and Monitoring
  • Monitor portfolio quality, credit exposures, and sectoral/geographic concentrations, ensuring alignment with the
    Bank's risk appetite.
  • Assess credit performance trends across the portfolio and recommend proactive mitigation actions (e.g.
    restructuring, provisioning, limit rebalancing).
  • Support the enhancement of credit risk rating systems and frameworks to improve portfolio risk sensitivity and
    credit loss forecasting.
  • Work closely with the Credit Risk team to ensure a consistent approach to credit origination, approval, and
    monitoring practices.
Lead Stress Testing and Scenario Analysis
  • Design and implement robust credit stress testing and scenario analysis frameworks to assess the portfolio's
    resilience to macroeconomic shocks.
  • Integrate sectoral, regional, and borrower-level data to model the impact of adverse scenarios on credit quality
    and capital adequacy.
  • Collaborate with credit analysts and economists to refine scenario assumptions and calibrate risk parameters.
  • Present key findings and recommendations to the CRO, Executive Committee, and Risk/Board Committees.
Drive Enterprise Risk Planning and Analytics
  • Lead integrated risk planning processes that link credit and portfolio risk insights to business planning, capital
    allocation, and strategic initiatives.
  • Conduct portfolio risk-adjusted return analysis to inform resource deployment and funding decisions.
  • Identify structural and systemic risks in the investment portfolio, including environmental, social, and governance
    (ESG) risks.
  • Embed enterprise risk insights into pipeline reviews, investment committees, and strategic investment decisions.
Oversee Portfolio Analytics and Credit Risk Reporting
  • Direct the production of enterprise and credit risk reports for senior management, executive leadership, and
    governance committees.
  • Deliver credit risk reports that are comprehensive, timely, and provide actionable insights for decision-making.
  • Translate technical credit analytics into digestible content for non-technical audiences, including developmental
    risk considerations.
  • Build capacity within the team to improve the quality, accuracy, and interpretation of portfolio-level risk reports.
Develop Tools and Frameworks for Credit Portfolio Management
  • Lead the development of credit portfolio management tools, dashboards, and frameworks to improve risk visibility
    and proactive decision-making.
  • Drive the integration of tools with core systems (e.g. credit risk, loan monitoring, financial reporting platforms).
  • Introduce advanced credit portfolio management techniques such as exposure aggregation, limit optimization,
    and early warning systems.
  • Build institutional capabilities in credit risk modeling, loss forecasting, and data-driven decision-making.
Stakeholder Engagement
  • Build trusted relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including the credit, investment, legal, finance,
    and development impact teams.
  • Provide risk leadership in cross-functional forums and investment decision-making processes.
  • Represent the risk function in engagements with external stakeholders such as auditors, regulators, and rating
    agencies as needed.
Governance, Compliance, and Reporting
  • Uphold strong governance frameworks for credit and enterprise risk, ensuring compliance with internal policies,
    regulatory standards, and best practices.
  • Oversee timely and transparent reporting of portfolio credit exposures, risk trends, and risk-adjusted performance
    metrics.
  • Contribute to the continuous improvement of risk governance and enterprise risk management (ERM)
    frameworks.
Key Measurements of Outputs:

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
  • Strength of portfolio credit risk metrics and trends (e.g. non-performing loans, sectoral concentration, risk-adjusted
    returns).
  • Timeliness, accuracy, and impact of credit and enterprise risk reports submitted to governance structures.
  • Quality and effectiveness of stress testing and scenario analysis outputs.
  • Integration of credit risk insights into strategic and capital planning processes.
  • Evidence of early identification and mitigation of portfolio vulnerabilities.
  • Quality of stakeholder engagement and support provided to credit and investment teams.
  • Development and adoption of portfolio management tools and models across the enterprise risk function.
  • Performance and development of direct reports and team capacity.
  • Progress in embedding digital tools and automation into credit risk analytics.
  • Quality of contributions to internal audits, regulatory reviews, and rating agency assessments
Expertise & Technical Competencies

Qualifications and Experience:

Qualifications
  • Degree in Risk Management, Finance, Economics or a related field.
Experience
  • Minimum 10 years of experience in credit risk, enterprise risk, or portfolio management in a financial institution,
    preferably within a DFI, development bank, or multilateral finance context.
  • Demonstrated experience in credit portfolio oversight, stress testing and enterprise analytics.
  • Deep understanding of credit risk frameworks, exposure management, and provisioning.
  • Strong knowledge of Basel risk principles, stress testing methodologies, and capital planning.
  • Proficiency in risk analytics tools, credit models, and enterprise risk platforms.
  • Proven ability to translate complex risk data into strategic insights for senior leadership.
  • Knowledge of risk-adjusted performance metrics and financial risk integration.
  • Familiarity with macroeconomic and sectoral risk drivers in South Africa and emerging markets.
  • Proven track record of leading and preparing good quality reports, documents and presentations for Executive
    Management, Board Committees and high-level stakeholders.
Technical Competencies:

Strategic Planning
  • Establishes challenging, attainable goals and objectives based on a customer focus perspective.
  • Looks to the future with a broad perspective.
  • Ensures performances measures are in place to monitor progress and assess accomplishments and achievement of strategic goals and objectives.
  • Develops initiatives to achieve goals and objectives.
  • Articulates the vision and plans to others.
Financial analysis
  • Serves as subject matter expert and leads work teams for more complex issues.
  • Evaluates and determines fiscal, operational, and service impacts; analyses and evaluates legislation; and implements and evaluates statistical models in their subject areas.
  • Demonstrates in-depth technical and administrative knowledge of the rules and regulations in the subject area and to defend analyses, testimony, and recommendations relating to a variety of issues before management and commissions.
Reporting
  • Designs, reviews and improves reporting processes and provides guidance.
  • Leads production of complex environment reports, takes an editorial role, determines content and level of detail, and ensures
    consistent messaging and branding.
Business Acumen
  • Takes actions to fit business strategy.
  • Assesses and links short-term tasks in the context of long-term business strategies or perspectives.
  • Reviews own actions against the organisation's strategic plan; includes the big picture when considering possible opportunities or projects or thinks about long-term applications of current activities.
  • Anticipates possible responses to different initiatives.
  • Understands the projected direction of the industry and how changes might impact the organisation.
Risk Management Policies and Procedures
  • Drives integration and standardisation of risk management processes across the organisation.
  • Advises on the application of the organisation's risk management policies, industry best practices and constructs organisation guidelines.
  • Analyses trends in risk management and internal control, evaluates implications, defines and implements organisation-wide response.
Required Personal Attributes

Leadership/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.
Driving delivery of results
  • Identifies and implements a business opportunity that will have a long-term impact on the business. Monitors progress and adapts the plan if necessary to ensure optimal benefit to the business.
  • Makes decisions, sets priorities, or chooses goals on the basis of inputs and outputs makes explicit considerations of potential profit, return on investment, or cost benefit analysis.
  • Based on the cost-benefit analysis, makes decisions of entrepreneurial risk nature.
Leading and empowering others
  • Identifies long-term goals for the team and communicates them to team members, ensuring their buy in.
  • Sets a good example by personally exercising desired behaviour, acts on values and beliefs.
  • Communicates a vision for the team and future success that inspires team members.
  • After assessing others' competence, one delegates full authority and responsibility to others to do a task in their own way.
  • Ensures that competent employees are given opportunities to further their careers.
Strategic and innovative thinking
  • Experiments with new approaches, testsscenarios, questions assumptions and challenges conventional thinking.
  • Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others, leveraging internal and external sources of information, to build incremental revenue and growth opportunities.
  • Understands connections and trade-offs of strategic choices to evaluate which ideas are practical and possible by considering business and/or scientific implications.
  • Develops innovative business and/or customer solutions that shape industry practices.
Impact and influence
  • Uses chains of indirect influence or experts / third parties to influence.
  • Uses an in-depth understanding of the interactions within a group to move toward a specific agenda.

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