Head, Partnerships & New Ventures

Reporting to the Director, Digital Financial Services, the position is responsible for advocating, developing, and promoting effective collaboration among relevant stakeholders, coordinate the monitoring and evaluation of joint programs undertaken with partners, provide leadership in resource mobilization and onboarding digital solutions to drive the digitalization agenda of the bank leveraging 3rd party partnerships.

Key Responsibilities

• Engage and socialize the Digital Payments Platform and Gateway to corporates and their respective values chains (distributors, wholesalers, retailers, suppliers) to drive payments, disbursements, savings and trade products.
• Drive for payments & merchants’ aggregators to use the bank’s digital payments platforms/gateway/rails by leveraging own or partner solutions to scale the bank ecosystem.  
• Engage with startups and fintechs to ensure that the bank’s digital platform is the choice partner for wallet as a service, payments, savings, loan and transfer services.
• Drive interoperability discussions and integrations with financial institutions, Telcos and Saccos to ensure users have a seamless interaction with various platforms through well designed and thought-out customer journeys and use cases.
• Manage the process of contracting, onboarding, integration, deployment and roll out of agreed services for the signed-up partners both internally and externally.
• Design and execute the digital financial services ecosystem and partnerships management framework and strategies to achieve the unit’s commercial and brand objectives. 
• Develop and maintain an opportunity assessment framework to guide the identification, promotion and development of new markets, services, or capabilities through partnerships and/or ecosystem engagements.
• Grow utilization of the digital payments capabilities of the bank to public sector, governments and social enterprises by providing relevant solutions, rails and channels infrastructure support.
• Establish digital solution requirements for KCB banked customers to be provided to ring fence the collections and payments.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with teams internally to define priorities, plan joint roadmaps with partners and help solve critical issues across the organization
• Proactively push product thinking and work closely with product and engineering teams, both internally and externally to build the best experiences for users.
• Manage startups and fintechs to deliver capacity, capability and scale for the bank.
• Develop work plans for new and improved capabilities, together with internal and external partners and maintain service levels agreements with relevant functions and third parties. Monitor and review the relevant teams’ Service level agreements (SLA) to ensure compliance.
• Coach, develop and manage the team.

The Person

For the above position, the successful applicant should have the following:

• A Bachelor’s degree preferably in Computer Science; Technology, Commerce or related field.
• Relevant certification in Digital Product Development/ Project Management/ AGILE Methodologies and Practices
• At least seven years managerial work experience with specific experience in:
• Digital Partnerships and New Ventures.
• Delivery of digital partnerships in a mobile & digital financial services industry 
• Building relationships, networks & managing teams
• Project Management
• Mobile Money Payments or Lending Platform Support.
• Have an understanding of Digital customer value management, customer service and retention.
• Experience working in an API partnership/advocacy role and integrations.

The above position is a demanding role for which the Bank will provide a competitive remuneration package to the successful candidate. If you believe you can clearly demonstrate your abilities to meet the criteria given above, please log in to our Recruitment portal and submit your application with a detailed CV.

To be considered your application must be received by Friday 22nd September 2023

Qualified candidates with disability are encouraged to apply.

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.