M-Pesa Africa Principal Internal Auditor at Safaricom Kenya

About the role:

Reporting to the Senior Manager – Internal Audit, the position holder will drive improvement in the internal control environment by providing proactive recommendations on control issues. Perform business risk analysis by reviewing business processes, prioritizing the risks identified and developing an audit plan for manager review. Execution of specific audit assignments according to the audit plan.

Responsibilities

•  Participation in the overall development and delivery of the audit plan.
•  Lead, plan, execute and communicate results of audit assignments as per the audit plan.
•  Manage assignment level quality requirements in all audit work in conformance to Internal policies, auditing standards and procedures for consistent quality audit results.
•  Provide advisory support management on designing, implementing, and enhancing business controls.
•  Provide independent assurance in strategic projects and proactively recommend controls to mitigate risks.
•  Follow up audit recommendations and validate the implementation of the closure actions.
•  Provide support to Risk Management processes to ensure that business key risks are adequately assessed, mitigated and the assurance map appropriately updated.
•  Provide automation of audit testing support for business controls.
•  Provide timely and relevant reports on audit outcomes to support management and the Board on risk assurance and mitigation decisions.
•  Keep abreast with the latest technology trends and provide input to mitigate emerging threats.

Core competencies, knowledge, and experience

•  Business Competencies
•  Working With Others.
•  Consciously takes steps to make the most of every conversation/interaction.
•  Identifies people’s needs, interests and motives to be able to influence the decisions they make.
•  Communicates simply to excite and engage people.
•  Pro-actively adapts own style and approach to build rapport, and work with others more effectively.
•  Builds and maintains strong relationships and networks.

​​​​​​​Operational Excellence

•  Targets effort and resources on high-value, high impact activity.
•  Focuses on achieving maximum performance and driving continuous improvement.
•  Thinks about processes and problems cross-functionally and end-to-end.
•  Uses knowledge of products, technology, process, systems and policy to solve problems.

​​​​​​​Creativity and Innovation

•  Finds creative ways to exploit opportunities and solve problems.
•  Takes risks and pushes what is possible.
•  Experiments with unorthodox approaches.

​​​​​​​Business Know-how

•  Uses data and research to make decisions that are competitively and financially robust.
•  Balances current and future needs.
•  Thinks and acts like an owner of the business.
•  Acts in line with legal, regulatory, professional and ethical standards.

​​​​​​​Working With Change

•  Responds flexibly to changing situations.
•  Manages the business and people aspects of change to drive performance.

​​​​​​​Project and Programme Management

•  Defines scope and deliverables in terms of time, cost, quality and business benefit.
•  Schedules activity and identifies resource needs, dependencies and synergies.
•  Evaluates progress, mitigates risks and addresses issues.

​​​​​​​Functional Competencies

• Audit
• This competence describes the ability to objectively evaluate critical business processes and projects to ensure compliance, mitigate risk and drive improvement by implementing and testing process controls and governance.

Qualifications

•  Upper second degree in a Technical or Business field from a recognized University.
•  Fully qualified accountant - CPA (K) or equivalent and /or Holder of Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) or equivalent.
•  6-8 years working experience in external audit specializing in Business processes and/or information systems assurance from a reputable audit firm or extensive experience within an internal audit function.
•  Strong interpersonal skills and ability to communicate with all levels of management as well as engage with diverse stakeholders in multiple functions and or markets.
•  Excellent reporting (oral and written) skills.
•  Proven ability to lead audits and manage an audit team.
•  Proven ability to self-start and effectively manage their own workload to deliver a series of assignments.
•  Experience of using data analytics tools to support Computer Assisted Audit Techniques (e.g. ACL or Windows Idea).