Group Head of Vendor Management at Equity Bank Kenya

Job purpose:

• The Group Head of vendor management will be responsible for end-to-end vendor lifecycle management including maintaining and improving relationships with third-party vendors that provide products and services to our bank and will be responsible for ensuring that vendors meet the bank's expectations and comply with all regulatory requirements. 
• The ideal candidate should have a strong understanding of vendor management practices, experience in the 3rd party risk management and compliance, and the ability to work collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders.

Duties and responsibilities:

• The selected individual will act as a primary liaison between Equity Group vendors and a variety of internal stakeholders and shall foster a culture of compliance within vendor engagements. 
• This individual will lead critical activities such as validating vendor viability, vendor categorization, performance management and periodic risk assessments. 
• This individual will maintain a centralized inventory of vendor’s data to ensure that all information remains accurate, up to date and readily available. 
• Lead proactive identification, remediation and tracking of vendor issues including their root causes. This individual will ensure that issues are reported, investigated, resolved, and assigned appropriate corrective action owners based on severity and other relevant  criteria. 
• This individual will review contracts, change orders, Service Level Agreements and Statements of Work and partner with other internal stakeholders and SMEs in championing Equity Group’s strategies and negotiating for suitable terms, conditions, and  outcomes. 
• Coordinate vendor transition processes: including clearly defined change request intake, completed checklists, appropriate prioritization, impact assessment, approval, and documentation.
• This individual will ensure vendor’s access to Equity Groups systems, networks and applications is recorded during onboarding, monitored throughout the engagement, and terminated promptly at the end of each vendor engagement. This will include appropriate deletion, purging or transfer of records, data, assets etc. back to Equity Group

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, Information Systems, Supply Chain Management, or a related field strongly preferred.
• Minimum of 5 years in strategic sourcing, vendor management, external relationship management, compliance or risk management experience strongly preferred.
• Professional certification in vendor management, supply chain management or related field is a plus.

Key competences:

• The ability to work collaboratively with cross functional teams and vendors, and experience in communicating with all levels of internal and external partners and communicating data and trends in an engaging way.
• Ability to make decisions, negotiate and take actions to solve emerging issues on behalf of a team or a unit in the organization. 
• Excellent project management and data analysis skills
• Ability to research and evaluate vendors using both publicly available information as well as resources provided internally.
• Ability to make recommendations to optimize supplier relationship structures.
• Ability to excel in an environment that is dynamic and with high ambiguity. 
• Strong Knowledge of vendor management best practices, regulatory requirements, and industry standards.

Working conditions:

• The position entails coverage of an extensive knowledge of the end -to-end Vendor lifecycle management including key aspects of 3rd-party risk management and ESG. This will require more time to be spent collaboratively in the office providing these services.