Senior Financial Manager: NMSIS

About NMS Insurance Services

NMS Insurance Services (SA) Ltd (“NMSIS”) is a composite microinsurer within Sanlam Fintech (“SFT”),acquired in November 2024 from the MultiChoice Group (“MCG”) (60% interest). We manage over 2.7m policies across roughly 2m clients in South Africa, delivering a bottom-line of approximately R500m, and with a bold ambition of more than double in size within five years, as we expand into the Rest of Africa (“RoA”).

Historically a product-focused microinsurer, we are now actively repositioning as the orchestrator of financial services within the MultiChoice ecosystem — a shift that will redefine our scale, partnerships, and impact. This strategic shift will see us expand beyond our licence-based products to deliver a broader range of embedded and standalone solutions from NMSIS, Sanlam, Santam, and affiliated partners. Our mandate extends to driving the success of the “Sanlam | Santam | MCG” Joint Venture in both South Africa and the RoA, working closely with SanlamAllianz and MultiChoice Africa Holdings.

Sanlam is a leading financial services group, recognized for its innovative approach towards providing comprehensive insurance, investment, health, and credit solutions to millions of clients across Africa. As part of its strategy, it is part of Sanlam’s mission to digitize new and existing business models and activate them to acquire digital-first customer segments that have historically been difficult and expensive to acquire. 

About the Role

This role is required to partner with various stakeholders within the Santam and Sanlam Groups, as well as Canal+ (previously called MultiChoice). The role is responsible for the comprehensive oversight and execution of reporting (incl. management, risk, regulatory and statutory) strategy and processes.

Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer of NMS Insurance Services, the Senior Financial Manager will be responsible for supporting the Chief Financial Officer with driving the various Finance objectives in line with the company culture. The Senior Financial Manager will be responsible for supporting the management and direction of finance resources, providing sound financial advice, ensuring that stringent and rigorous accounting processes and controls are in place, ensuring accurate reporting of financial results and operational excellence.

Roles and Responsibilities

Collaboration and relationship building

• Collaborate with stakeholders across the Finance community and other stakeholders within Sanlam, Santam and Multichoice, where necessary.
• Involvement in business-critical projects such as the transition of NMS Insurance Services from the Multichoice environment to Sanlam as appropriate.

Budgeting And Forecasting

• Formulation of budgets and/or multi-year plans in line with organisational strategic goals/objectives and KPIs by clearly defining business drivers and underlying non-financial information that drives the financials.
• Ensure a smooth target setting process with involvement of appropriate decision-makers.
• Ensure that the budget framework/principles prescribed by Group Finance is adhered to.
• Drive the annual budgeting process to ensure timely submission of budgets for inclusion with the Broader Group and the Company Board.
• Refresh forecasts to align to current performance and economic and commercial impacts (as required) on a periodic basis throughout the year, i.e. monthly, quarterly, annually.
• Ensure effective processes for tracking and improving forecast reliability.
• Support senior executives to make sound business decisions in the long and short term, through analytics driven insights.
• Advise and implement best practice methods to ensuring operational efficiency and profitability of the business, by increasing revenue and reducing costs. 

Financial Control and Close

•  Oversee the accuracy of information for preparation of financial statements, ensuring compliance with IFRS.
•  Ensure timely, accurate and transparent month-end, quarter-end, and year-end closings.
•  Coordinate internal and external audits and liaise with auditors to ensure compliance and address any issues.
•  Document internal control policies and procedures well (general close, reconciliations, inter-company, etc.)
•  Effective management of the financial close process and activities.
•  Ensure appropriate clearing of control accounts, reconciliations, etc.
•  Managing the taxation affairs and processes of the business (incl. corporate income tax, dividends tax, VAT).
•  Liaising with internal tax experts across the Santam Group for specialist advice.
•  Ensure compliance with tax laws and prepare tax returns.
•  Identify, monitor and managing financial risks, ensuring effective mitigation strategies are in place.
•  Conduct regular reviews and assessment of the adequacy of internal financial controls (IFCs) and the corresponding risk and control matrices (RACMs), including recommendations for improvements.
•  Manage a proactive control monitoring process.

Reporting

•  Managing and overseeing the company’s financial systems.
•  Manage master data changes (e.g. chart of accounts), maintain business rules, chart of accounts and balance sheet accounts.
•  Actively drive financial reporting to meet prescribed organisational and regulatory deliverables and timelines.
•  Drive system process efficiency improvements including the use of available Business Intelligence (BI) tools, and the design/ redesign of reports as needed.
•  Identify and mitigate risks associated with financial reporting and data management.
• Collaborate across functions, including finance, tax, actuarial, treasury, IT and business units, to ensure the accuracy and relevance of management reports.
•  Perform financial analysis of key business drivers and provide commentary on business performance and insights on future trends within the organisation.
•  Active expense management.
•  Analyse data and forecasts and provide reports with recommendations that enables accelerated decision-making by senior management and EXCO.
•  Coordinate and prepare reports to the Audit Committee and Board.
• Prepare annual financial statements (including disclosure) and the reporting packs.
•  Prepare regulatory returns.
•  Adhere and promote sound governance principles, including the requirements of King IV and the Companies Act.
•  Provide 1st line risk management support to ensure the business has a robust risk framework in place and proactively manage internal and external risk to the company.
•  Update the CURA register quarterly.

What will make you successful in this role?

• Playing an integral part in developing and implementing the Finance Key Performance Metrics.
•  Being a team player and contributing to the teams success.
•  Owns problems that require coordination across multiple teams, roles and/or individuals.
•  Encourages and facilitates creative problem-solving across teams, fostering collaboration to tackle complex challenges with limited resources.
•  Independently discovers, scopes and breaks down complex impactful work for self and others, ensuring accountability and inspiring ownership for team outcomes, whilst leading by example during execution.
•  A positive, client centric and growth mindset, proactively seeking self-development opportunities to increase impact through quality service delivery.
•  Continuous pursuit of innovative solutions.
•  Promote and uphold the brand, culture and values.
•  Embodying the values of honesty and integrity.

What will you enjoy?

•  Participating in and support with embedding a high-performance culture where ownership, speed and agility is required to make an impact and the knowledge that your contribution is valued. 
•  Learn from organisational experts and having access to a network of seasoned professionals to leverage expertise from.

You will be the best Candidate if you have

Qualifications

• CA (SA) Qualification

Experience

•  Minimum 5 - 8 years senior management experience within the Insurance Industry.
•  Managing finance during business transitions and working with multiple other functions to ensure success (i.e systems, processes, people)
•  Excellent leadership, communication and interpersonal skills to execute as an individual contribute and through a small team. (influencing and relationship building).
•  Strategic thinker with the ability to translate complex data into actionable insights.
•  Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
•  Ability to manage multiple projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment.
•  Detail-oriented with a commitment to accuracy and pride in quality product delivery.
•  Excellent team player with a collaborative approach to working with cross-functional teams.

Knowledge

•  Proficiency in financial software and data analytics tools (e.g. SAP, HFM, PowerBI, etc.) – Visualisation & dashboarding.
•  Strong knowledge of IFRS and regulatory requirements.
•  Strong knowledge of managing tax compliance 
•  Very Good technical accounting knowledge.
•  Knowledge of Sanlam’s financial reporting systems will be an advantage.

Build a successful career with us

We’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future – your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping  our employees to realise their worth. Through its five business clusters – Sanlam Fintech, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz, Santam, as well as MiWay and the Group Office – the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.

Turnaround time

The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers. 

Our commitment to transformation

The Sanlam Group is committed to transformation and embracing diversity and our employment equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse workplace with employment equity as a key goal to create an inclusive workforce, representative of the demographics of our society as well as people with disabilities.