Job Description

PURPOSE & JOB DESCRIPTION:
The Executive: Product Performance Analysis & Costing is a key member of the leadership team, accountable for the strategic oversight of value-added product funds across the Group. The role provides executive-level guidance on financial modelling, costing structures, and product financial performance to ensure sustainability, transparency, and profitability. This position partners closely with the Executive Team and Board to influence strategic decision-making and safeguard stakeholder value.
EXPERIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ATTRIBUTES REQUIRED:
Technical Skills:

• Advanced expertise in financial modelling, forecasting, and scenario analysis
• Strong knowledge of costing methodologies, building costing models, product portfolio administration frameworks, and performance measurement
• Proficiency in financial management systems, ERP, and BI/reporting tools
• Skilled in pricing strategies, and risk-adjusted decision-making

Experience:

• Minimum 810 years senior finance or product performance and analysis experience, with at least 2 years in an executive or Exco role
• Proven leadership in analysing performance of large-scale product funds, costing structures, or financial planning operations
• Demonstrated track record of engaging at Board level and influencing strategic decisions
• Experience in Product financial performance analysis or financial services industries preferred
• Good current day knowledge of IFRS relevant to funds
• Strong track record in leading high-performing teams, driving organisational change, and implementing best-practice financial governance

Soft & Leadership Skills:

• Exceptional strategic thinking, commercial acumen, and decision-making ability
• Strong executive presence and communication skills, with the ability to engage diverse stakeholders
• Collaborative leader who inspires trust, accountability, and results
• High integrity, resilience, and adaptability in complex, changing environments
• Critical thinking and inquisitive nature
• An entrepreneurial spirit
• Strong analytical ability to interpret financial information, attention to detail
• Strong verbal and written communication

DUTIES / KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
Strategic Leadership & Decision Support:

• Provide executive oversight of all financial modelling, product performance analysis, and costing frameworks
• Shape and drive the long-term financial strategy for product performance
• Serve as the trusted advisor to the MD, Exco, and Board on product performance financial matters, pricing strategies
• Lead evaluation of new product or channel opportunities

Governance, Risk & Compliance:

• Ensure robust governance, controls, and reporting frameworks for all products under management
• Oversee compliance with all regulatory, statutory, and contractual obligations
• Contribute to finance and fund committees related to product performance

Financial Oversight & Performance:

• Set costing strategies and principles to ensure fairness, accuracy, and alignment with business objectives
• Monitor and report on product profitability, performance indicators, and sustainability metrics
• Present product performance reports and insights to the Exco and Board, highlighting risks and opportunities

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Act as the primary liaison for product-related financial matters with external stakeholders, regulators, auditors, and partners
• Ensure clear, transparent communication to members, clients, and business partners

Leadership & People Management:

• Lead and develop a high-performing team
• Drive a culture of excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement
• Mentor managers to build succession and long-term capability in product analysis and costing

EDUCATION:
Education and Professional Qualifications:

• Postgraduate qualification in Applied statistics and/or Applied mathematics, Data Science, Financial Engineering/Quantitative Finance or similar essential
• Chartered Accountant CA(SA), CFA, CIMA, MBA, or equivalent professional qualification advantageous
• Executive leadership will be an advantage

Technical skills and data engineering (beyond basic SQL, R, or Python):

• SQL for data management: writing complex queries to extract and transform data, including using advanced functions, and improving performance so large queries run efficiently
• Working with data and statistics in Python: handling and cleaning large datasets, performing numerical and scientific calculations, running statistical tests, building predictive models, training machine learning algorithms, analysing survival data, making time-series forecasts, and keeping track of experiments and model versions
• Working with data and models in R: manipulating and summarizing data efficiently, preparing data for analysis, building machine learning workflows, producing forecasts, and fitting flexible statistical models
• Big data and workflow management: analysing very large datasets with distributed tools, setting up automated data pipelines that move and transform data reliably, using version control and automated testing to keep projects consistent, and deploying models in ways that allow them to be monitored, tracked, and updated at scale
• Business intelligence and reporting: creating dashboards and interactive visualizations that make results understandable to non-technical audiences and connecting those dashboards to live data sources
• Containers and reproducible environments: packaging models and applications so they can run the same way on different machines, making them easier to test, share, and deploy

Costing and value proposition analytics:

• Unit economics: analysing customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, churn/retention patterns, cross-sell impacts, and payback times
• Pricing and profitability: estimating customer sensitivity to price changes, testing scenarios and stress cases, and measuring profitability across channels, partners, or products
• Fraud and abuse detection: identifying unusual or suspicious behaviour using anomaly detection, graph-based methods, rule systems, and machine learning

OTHER REQUIREMENTS:

• Criminal and credit clear
• Own and live up to Company values
• Attend training initiatives to improve work quality and enhance own skills
• Own or reliable transport

Skills Required