Career
experiences

Enterprise risk management

DRESS:
Smart casual – with jeans on Friday

LOCATION:
4 Merchant Place – in Sandton, Johannesburg

ENVIRONMENT:
Dynamic, fast-paced, busy, deadline-driven, prove yourself, often new projects, very social and bring cake on your birthday, ask as many questions as you can, learn more than you thought you could.

BENEFITS:

• Interaction with many stakeholders
• Come to grips with Group structure
• Experience and understand credit models across the entire Group
• Gain insight into credit technical committee discussions

FOCUS AREAS:

• Perform the credit risk independent validations for the group (FNB, WesBank and RMB)
• Attend and participate in credit risk technical committee meetings where models are presented for approval and challenged at a technical level
• Produce model validation reports and present to approval committees
• Research industry and global practice as well as latest developments
• Get involved in other group-wide projects as they arise

Group treasury

DRESS:
Semi formal

LOCATION:
4 Merchant Place – in Sandton, Johannesburg

ENVIRONMENT:
Dynamic, fast paced and deadline driven.

BENEFITS:

• Obtain knowledge of accounting standards relating to use of hedging derivatives
• Interaction with senior officials in banks and SARB
• Gain insight in the use of financial instruments in the bank

FOCUS AREAS:

• Provide detailed analysis of the banking book’s interest rate risk profile with a view to managing risk and optimising earnings
• Analysis of the banking boo’’s interest rate risk profile
• Analysis of banking book products and to unpack the interest rate risk associated with new and existing products and structures
• Monitoring the impact of hedging strategies on risk profile and earnings

Group internal audit

DRESS:
Semi formal (we only wear suits when we meet with the regulators)

LOCATION:
4 Merchant Place – in Sandton, Johannesburg

ENVIRONMENT:

• Highly skilled and diverse team of statisticians, mathematicians, actuaries, engineers, economists, etc. (not just a bunch of accountants as everybody would expect from a team in audit)
• A learning environment where the whole team is busy studying further and constantly widening their knowledge of the group and the financial industry
• A helicopter view of all the business processes within the bank and an opportunity to engage with the regulators, non-executives, management (CEOs, CFOs and lots of other Cs in Exco) and the various business units
• Teamwork is encouraged

BENEFITS:

• Exposure to all the different franchises within the group
• Exposure to all the different risk types (including credit, market, operational, liquidity, interest rate, counterparty credit risk)
• Gain insight in the group structure and governance processes
• Interact with many stakeholders and participate in many committees across the group
• Exposure to key regulations, compliance requirements and laws
• Learn to take ownership of, plan and execute projects (which include independent validations and audit assignments)
• Validate statistical models pre-implementation and audit the use of these models post implementation
• Work with powerful analytical software like SAS, Matlab, E-views, Excel, etc
• Typical models we validate include:
  • Credit scorecards
  • Pricing models
  • Impairment and provisioning models
  • Affordability models
  • Valuation models and financial instruments loss distribution models
  • Simulation models
  • Regulatory and economic capital models
  • Stress testing models, etc.
• Travel to Cape Town, Namibia, Botswana and the UK where some of the clients we audit have offices

FOCUS AREAS:

• Soundness of model risk management across FirstRand
• Plan and execute independent validations and internal audit assignments related to financial and strategic risk models across the group and various risk types
• Review of such models includes data quality, origination, statistical robustness, implementation, usage, monitoring, stress testing, capital calculation and governance
• Interact with the relevant divisional teams in order to inform the scope of the assignment to be embarked on
• Provide independent assurance to the board, the audit committee, risk committees, management and the regulators on the model risk control environment

FirstRand Consolidated accounting

DRESS:
Formal attire

LOCATION:
Merchant Place – in Sandton, Johannesburg

ENVIRONMENT:
Work closely with a designated colleague, analytical, deadline driven, bring cake on your birthday, process driven, high stakes, eclectic.

BENEFITS:

• Exposure to the big picture, overall structure and group systems like nowhere else
• Communicate across all the franchises, with many different areas and at many different levels
• Accumulate hours in the accounting competencies.

FOCUS AREAS:

• Populating financial statements
• Through many different entities
• Pulling and interpreting grids

FirstRand Group treasury

DRESS:
Formal attire

LOCATION:
Rand Merchant Place – in Sandton, Johannesburg

ENVIRONMENT:
Work from day one, challenging, take initiative, highly technical, central to all the Group activities, high pressure, deadline driven.

BENEFITS:

• Highly technical exposure to valuation
• Accounting of portfolios
• A variety of financial instruments
• Knowledge of dealmaking activities
• Central view of the group
• Regulatory reporting experience
• Extensive accounting and other competencies experience

FOCUS AREAS:

• Basel reporting
• Ratio and trend analysis
• Monthly commentary
• Month end reporting
• Daily reporting