M-Pesa Africa – Business Development Manager- Financial Services at Safaricom Kenya

DESCRIPTION

We are pleased to announce the subject career opportunity within M-Pesa Commercial (M-Pesa Africa) reporting to the Principal Product Manager. 

 Role Description 

M-Pesa, is a pioneering fintech business and global market leader in mobile money. Starting from 2007 as a convenient means by which the unbanked and underbanked can make digital payments, M-Pesa has now grown to offer >50 million active customers financial services, enterprise, merchant and retail solutions. We are proud of our work in enabling the digital economy in our markets, and in driving financial inclusion.

The Commercial Team works with the M-Pesa leadership across our 7 OpCos to co-create the product strategy, drive thought leadership, design new products and features, set commercial priorities with the engineering teams and lead business development for strategic multi-country partnership opportunities. Partnerships are a cornerstone of the M-Pesa vision to become the leading FinTech platform in Sub-Saharan Africa.

 As the M-Pesa Business Development manager, you will define the target partnerships roadmap, then build and execute the business development strategy to deliver on this. In addition, you will manage key partner accounts to delight customers and ensure strategic partnerships reach their operational and commercial potential.

You will also be supporting the OpCos to execute on commercial contracts and leverage regional alignment for multi-market frameworks. It will involve developing and maintaining business development material, refining commercial models, liaising with legal and regulatory teams, building and maintaining a business development pipeline, relationship management, inputting key partner needs to the agile development process, sharing best practice on partnership support and helping markets migrate existing relationships to the M-PESA AFRICA platform.

This will involve being able to engage and influence multiple stakeholders, respond quickly to commercial changes, and at times aligning conflicting interests to execute our financial services platform strategy.

 Key Role Responsibilities 

Financial Services: 

Complexity of area/responsibilities:

The Financial Services Agile Release Train (ART) delivers a wide set of financial products and services, above and beyond normal financial transactions, including insurance, savings and wealth. These highly complex products provide Merchant and Consumer loans and Overdrafts, and future products will need to be driven from RFP, to in-market pilots and innovations to mature products.

 Additional expertise needed: Deep understanding of Financial Products and key industry players required, having previously delivered external negotiations within FinTech and Banking Sector, and engagement with regulatory bodies is a plus. >5 years of professional experience with experience at a bank, regulatory body, fintech or other relevant digital business 

*Drive partnership management to support commercial objectives and build a business development pipeline:

• Own business development pipeline and drive business development with relevant 3rd parties, negotiate key commercial and product terms and support legal on contracting
• Proactively build and maintain business development documentation, including key proof points 
• Design business development strategies to fulfil target partnerships roadmap
• Collaborate with the wider Commercial organization to design and execute marketing initiatives to generate new leads within target partners
• Become the voice of key strategic accounts within M-Pesa, ensuring partner needs are managed
• Build local market capacity for executing partnership deals and local contracts
• Engage pro-actively with product management to ensure key account/ partner’s needs are reflected in the feature backlog
• Liaise with product managers to share partner feedback and understand product priorities to support the product roadmap

  Own a portfolio of key strategic accounts and accelerate commercial alignment: 

• Act as the SPOC for a portfolio of accounts, ensuring partnership success
• Optimize the P&L for key strategic partners, driving the commercial success of partnerships
• Identify and implement initiatives to deepen and broaden key strategic partnerships
• Review with local markets existing contractual agreements and build pathway to migrate
• Share best practice on partner management and common issues impacting our corporate customers
• Support product managers in responding to commercial analysis once services are live to have common commercial frameworks

 Identify innovation and cost-saving initiatives:

• Reduce dependency on third party suppliers to support sales activities
• Identify new feature ideas to feed into the product roadmap, re-assure partners and expedite the platform approach
• Address escalations/conflicts of interest and work with stakeholders to find ways of mitigating these
• Flexibly support business development needs across credit, savings, wealth and insurance

 Build governance mechanisms to respond to partners’ needs: 

• Set-up cadence of governance meetings with partners to build trust and for effective relationship management
• Liaise with internal stakeholders such as VGE, Vodacash FS to successfully implement partnerships and address any conflicts of interest

QUALIFICATIONS

Apply if you have: 

• Bachelor’s degree required, a master’s degree in a related field preferred
• > 6 years of professional experience in business development, account management or product management within technology, financial services, or consulting
• Strong knowledge of mobile money, fintech and financial services
• Experience in sales and managing commercial negotiations
• Understanding of regulatory environment and future direction of regulation
• Analytical bent of mind, structured thinker with strong business acumen
• Contagious passion for, and commitment to driving mobile money growth and innovation
• Experience using Salesforce, or similar CRM tools

Desirable:

 Knowledge of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)

What you can expect from us: 

• We believe in a fair and robust interview process  
• We have a robust flexible total reward scheme 
• Dedicated support and mentoring/coaching 
• Opportunity to develop and progress – plus a solid dedication to work-life integration. It all means you’ll have everything you need to advance your career and achieve your full potential.