Cards Portfolio Specialist

Job Title: Cards Portfolio Specialist

Term: 12 months

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Division: Africa

Reports to: CEO/Head of Cards

Relevant experience: Card payments, commercial card, card operations

Mandatory requirements: 

1. Based in Nairobi 
2. 10 - 15 yrs experience in card payments business.

Purpose of Job:

Seeking to drive card business growth and strategy predominately focused on acquisition acceleration, payments optimization and financial education. Client needs a resource to be able to manage the card business portfolio and support go to market strategy of the card products.

TASKS

Core Job Responsibilities and Accountabilities

• P&L accountability, monitor revenues, costs and profits on monthly and quarterly basis
• Initiate and run sales and marketing activities in collaboration with channel, marketing and IT teams e.g.
• Customer acquisition activities
• Campaigns and promotions
• Tactical initiatives that would increase revenues of the bank and reduce costs
• Monitor card portfolio health e.g. card transaction approval rates, growth in spend, credit limit utilization, pricing, etc and take necessary action to remediate negative trends
• Proactively identify opportunities to optimize portfolios through data-analysis and clear understanding of revenue levers
• Monitor scheme costs and compliance issues and ensure efficient cost management
• Work to establish systems and processes to ensure efficient running of the card business from a fraud, operations and sales perspective (this will require working with various functional teams in the organization)
• Identify acquisition opportunities focusing on cross-sell for the short-term
• Design the ideal campaigns based on an understanding of the client capabilities and priorities, which may cover large-scale staff and consumer education and training
• Build business cases to facilitate internal buy-in and approvals for campaigns and product launches
• Coordinate campaign execution and troubleshoot any issues that may come-up
• Work with client and Mastercard teams to define new products and optimal CVP
• Program manage new product launches by coordinating across all stakeholders
• Report on progress and troubleshoot / escalate issues
• Implement relevant projects with Mastercard related to Tokenization, virtual cards etc
• Working with marketing, communication, IT and operations teams to monitor customer experience issues related to:

1. Declines 
2. Fraud 
3. Chargebacks 
4. Address technical issues with card products with the relevant operations and IT teams 

Knowledge and Experience 

Qualifications/ expectations required: 

• Proven experience in card products business development in retail banking 
• Strong analytical, communication, leadership, and stakeholder management skills. 
• Ability to manage end-to-end card product launch or revamp projects independently. 
• Knowledge of market trends, opportunities, and product launches in the payments market 
• Experience in communicating and interacting with senior stakeholders for periodic updates. 
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to multi-task in a fast-paced environment. 
• Bachelor's Degree in appropriate field of study or equivalent work experience 
• Ability to work with various functional departments across the banks to get things done 

Mandatory Skills** 

• Must be on client site/country 
• Card project implementation and management 
• Deep knowledge of Card business and payments 
• Based in Nairobi Kenya 
• 10 – 15 yrs experience in card payments business/project implementation