Senior Manager – Corporate Operations

Sidian Bank Limited is a financial institution founded in 1984, operating in the banking and financial services sector in Kenya. It aims to provide strategic leadership in corporate operations.

The Senior Manager of Corporate Operations is responsible for providing strategic leadership across all corporate operational units, specifically treasury, trade, custody, and payments. This involves ensuring that all operations are executed accurately, promptly, and with robust controls, adhering to the bank's strategic goals, customer commitments, risk appetite, and regulatory requirements. The role focuses on driving operational excellence, service reliability, process discipline, and automation, while fostering collaboration with stakeholders and ensuring continuous improvement and resolution of audit issues. Direct leadership is provided to managers overseeing the respective operations units.

1. Define and implement the Corporate Operations agenda for treasury, trade, custody, and payments, ensuring alignment with business growth, customer service, resilience, and regulatory compliance.
2. Supervise the entire operational performance, encompassing transaction processing, settlements, reconciliations, documentation, reporting, investigations, and exception management, all within established service level agreements and cut-off times.
3. Establish and maintain a robust first-line control environment by enforcing maker-checker principles, AML/CFT and sanctions controls, audit readiness, issue resolution, incident management, and prompt escalation of significant risks.
4. Collaborate with various internal departments such as business, treasury, risk, compliance, finance, technology, legal, audit, and external partners to eliminate operational bottlenecks and deliver dependable service to customers and stakeholders.
5. Champion initiatives for process simplification, automation, straight-through processing, reconciliation enhancements, and capacity planning to minimize manual effort, reduce errors, improve turnaround times, and lower operational costs.
6. Provide clear governance reports on operational metrics including volumes, SLA performance, exceptions, risk events, reconciliations, audit actions, productivity, and regulatory matters for management review and decision-making.
7. Lead and develop the managers of Treasury, Trade, Custody, and Payments Operations, enhancing accountability, capabilities, succession planning, and fostering a culture of ethical and controlled execution.

1. Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Accounting, Banking, Economics, Operations Management, or a related field.
2. Master’s degree in Business, Finance, Strategy, Operations, or a related discipline is an advantage.
3. Professional banking qualifications like AKIB or equivalent recognized banking certification are an advantage.
4. Training or certification in operational risk, AML/CFT, compliance, project management, Lean Six Sigma, business process improvement, or digital transformation is advantageous.
5. Minimum of 8–10 years of progressive experience in banking operations, corporate operations, service delivery, operational risk, or related banking functions.
6. At least 5 years of experience in a senior leadership role managing multi-unit operations teams within a regulated financial institution.
7. Proven experience in service delivery management, audit issue resolution, operational risk control, regulatory compliance, process improvement, and stakeholder management.
8. Experience supporting treasury, trade finance, custody, payments, digital channels, or centralized operations environments is an advantage.
9. Strong knowledge of corporate operations, treasury settlements, trade finance operations, custody operations, payments processing, reconciliations, exception management, operational risk management, audit issue closure, and multi-unit performance management.
10. Good understanding of applicable Kenyan banking regulations, CBK prudential expectations, POCAMLA, data protection requirements, and internal control standards.
11. Ability to interpret operational data, define KPIs, prepare management reports, and translate insights into corrective actions.
12. Strong proficiency in Microsoft Office applications and working knowledge of core banking, workflow, service management, reporting, and issue-tracking systems.
13. Practical understanding of business continuity, incident management, outsourcing/vendor risk, and change management within banking operations.