Head Innovation & New Ventures at KCB Bank Kenya

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES: 

• Formalize and drive the engagement of new venture partners (both new venture capital providers and start up partners)
• Formulate new ventures partnership engagement strategies, policies, frameworks, and tools and ensure compliance & execution in line with business growth needs and expectations.
• Engage and socialize the KCB Digital Payments Platform and Gateway to FinTech’s, start-ups and joint ventures and their respective values chains to drive payments, disbursements, savings and digital trade products.
• Ensure Ecosystem engagement, which involves Fintechs proposals reviews & Elite club build, hackathons, VC unicorn partnerships & funding opportunities to scale  innovations including social efforts & governance for large partners; Learning & knowledge transfer partners (start ups support)
• Steward the Buni innovation sandbox and guide the API play with venture partners and FinTech’s. Engage the developer community with targeted hackathons, accelerator, and crowd sourcing programs to grow a steady stream of concepts and innovations into the KCB innovation pipeline.
• Engage with startups and fintechs to ensure that the bank’s digital platform is the choice partner for wallet as a service, payments, savings, loan and transfer services.
• Drive interoperability discussions and integrations with financial institutions, Telcos and Saccos to ensure users have a seamless interaction with various platforms through well designed and thought-out customer journeys and use cases.
• Steward the VC and fintech start-ups policy - VC Entry rules, Partnership guide, VC Funding & cost mgmt., VC performance management, Revenue share model, VC Entry /Exit protocols, M&A Models, innovation funding model, Venture capitalists’ selection / engagement and start-up to VC partner matching etc 
•  Manage the process of contracting, onboarding, integration, deployment and roll out of agreed services for the signed-up new ventures & fintech partners both internally and externally.
• Design and execute the innovation management strategy, framework, and tools to achieve the Group’s new products commercial and business objectives. 
• Develop and maintain an opportunity assessment framework to guide the identification, promotion, and development of new ventures, fintech and BAAS partnerships and/or ecosystem engagements.
• Proactively push design thinking and work closely with new ventures, fintech partners, product and engineering teams, both internally and externally to build the best customer experience for KCB digital & partnership  innovation products.
• Manage startups and fintech’s to deliver capacity, capability, and scale for the bank.
• Coach, develop and manage the inovvation team.

The successful candidate should have the following:

• A Bachelor’s degree preferably in Technology, Design or Business related field
• A Master’s degree will be an added advantage.
• At least 8 years of relevant work experience including leading digital product development, business development, and managing teams. Work experience should also include the below: 
• Digital Product and platform management
• innovation and product development management
• Delivery of mobile financial products and services in a high growth environment
• Building relationships, networks & Managing teams
• Project Management/Relationship Management.
• Mobile Money or Payments or Lending Platform Support.
• Credit Analysis & Lending