Job Summary

The incumbent has the overall responsibility for developing the Group’s risk management framework, including establishing the risk management mechanisms to identify, assess, monitor, measure and control the broad spectrum of risks, to which the Group is exposed, within and outside Syria and within its conventional and Islamic banking operations at the transactional and overall portfolio level. The incumbent will endeavor to constantly implement best practices pertaining to risk management including across all risk categories, including but not limited to Basel II pronouncements.

Main Responsibilities

A. Shareholder & Financial:

- Ensure pro-active steps are taken to enable the Group to move to more sophisticated/ advanced methods for calculation of capital adequacy in relation to credit, operational and market risk with the possibility to reduce the overall capital requirements.

- Develop the Group’s overall risk management framework that defines the Group’s risk appetite and the associated risk rejection, risk acceptance and risk mitigation strategies.

- Continuously highlight the high-risk sectors/ industries/ customer segments, adverse movements in markets etc. and take adequate and timely mitigating actions to safeguard the Group’s interest.

- Create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for performance monitoring and quality measurement purposes for the entire Group Risk Department and monitor their achievement on periodic basis.

- Lead and guide the Group Risk Department’s annual budgeting process.

B. Customer (Internal & External):

- Ensure coordination with Compliance to obtain updates on regulatory changes pertaining to credit, market and operational risk to assess their impact on the Group’s credit risk profile.

- Oversee finalization of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with internal departments/ units to achieve improvements in turnaround time, with respect to review of processes/ products/ credit facility applications from a risk perspective which will also help increase external customer satisfaction.

- Build and maintain strong and effective relationship with all other related departments and units to achieve the Group’s goals/ objectives.

- Provide timely and accurate information to the external and internal auditors and the Compliance function as and when required.

- Liaise with externally appointed consultants to provide them with relevant info to enable them to determine/ advise on the Group’s risk profile and effectiveness of current processes, as and when required.

C. Internal (Processes, Products, Regulatory):

- Ensure the existence of an environment characterized by adequate Board and senior management oversight at a portfolio and transactional level, where applicable.

- Facilitate the development of clearly defined and updated policies and procedures for risk management that cover all material risks associated with the business and which clearly assign/ identify accountability.

- Assist in the establishment of a limits structure for the Group for approvals and for managing the risk concentration. Also, assist in the monitoring of these limits, ensuring that exceptions are only approved by the respective committee/ authority.

- Establish a mechanism for reporting of excess/ exceptions to approved limits to the Board based on the information obtained through the risk management systems in place or through the respective departments/ units.

- Overall responsible for timely review of process/ products/ credit facility applications within the stipulated TAT to facilitate conduct of business.

- Co-ordinate the support of the documentation and the implementation of departmental policies and procedures which will set out the principles, methodology and techniques to establish effective risk management.

- Identify key accumulations of risk within and between business areas and to assess the impact across the Group with a view to proposing recommendations to mitigate risks.

- Contribute towards the continual development, promotion and maintenance of common methodologies for identifying and assessing risk and determine the adequacy and cost effectiveness of risk treatments applied within the Group.

- Monitor risk information for all business areas and challenge the adequacy and completeness of the information generated, provide recommendations for improvement and obtain agreement to their implementation.

- Act within the limits of the powers delegated to the incumbent and delegate authority to the respective departmental/ unit heads and monitor exercise of the same.

- Responsible for establishing and maintaining a sound internal control environment across the Department including but not limited to the establishment of an organizational structure that clearly assigns authority, responsibility, and reporting relationships and avoids conflict of interest situations/ inadequate segregation of duties.

- Attend Group Strategy, Group ALCO, Group Risk, Group Information Technology, Group Credit, Group Business Development, Group Infrastructure, Group Human Capital Committee meetings.

D. Learning & Knowledge:

- Finalize the Department’s training plan based on inputs received from the incumbent’s direct reports and thereby develop/ enhance the skill sets of Group Risk personnel and provide them with opportunities for career development.

- Hold meetings with direct reports and assess their performance. Also take decisive action to ensure speedy resolution of unresolved grievances or conflicts amongst Group Risk Department personnel.

- Possess superior knowledge of credit, operational, market and legal risk management best practices including but not limited to pertinent Basel pronouncements on credit, market and operational risk management and capital adequacy requirements.

E. Other:

- Ensure high standards of confidentiality and ethics to safeguard commercially sensitive information.

Education and Experience Requirements

- Bachelor/ Masters degree preferably in finance, economics or related subjects.

- Professional certification such as PRM, CPA, CFA etc. is a plus .

- Minimum of 15 years' experience in a major bank of which at least 10 years in bank in a managerial capacity in the risk function.