Head of Marketing and Communications: Sanlam Ecosystem - Banking

What will you do?

The successful candidate will lead the end-to-end marketing strategy, brand positioning, and go-to-market execution for the Sanlam GOtyme Banking-led ecosystem proposition — positioning Sanlam as a credible, modern, digital, and accessible financial services ecosystem. This role drives brand reappraisal, customer adoption, ecosystem habit formation, and commercial growth across banking and insurance propositions, integrating seamlessly across clusters, branches, intermediaries, and digital channels. 

What will make you successful in this role?

This role is pivotal to Sanlam’s entry into banking and credit, the success of the Sanlam Ecosystem strategy, and the repositioning of Sanlam for the next generation of customers.

This is a senior, highly visible leadership role. The successful candidate will:

• Operate comfortably at Exco and Board level, presenting with clarity and confidence.
• Inspire and influence cross-functional teams without direct authority.
• Translate complex ecosystem strategy into disciplined, measurable execution at scale.
• Build alignment across complex stakeholder environments — internal and external.
• Lead with a growth, innovation, and customer-first mindset.
• Navigate the tension between long-term brand building and short-term commercial performance.

Qualification and Experience

Qualification

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Commerce, or a related field.
• Postgraduate qualification in Marketing, Business Administration, Strategy, or Digital Business (advantageous).

Experience

• 10+ years of senior marketing leadership experience.
• Proven track record in digital, fintech, banking, or financial services marketing.
• Experience leading large-scale GTM programmes with budgets exceeding R100m.
• Demonstrated success in app growth marketing — downloads, activation, retention, and monetisation.
• Deep experience with performance marketing, CRM, marketing automation, and digital analytics platforms.
• Experience integrating physical and digital customer journeys in a multi-channel environment.
• Executive stakeholder management experience, including Exco and Board engagement.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Skills and Competencies

Digital and Technical:

• Performance marketing and paid media (Meta, Google, programmatic)
• App store optimisation (ASO) and mobile growth
• CRM, marketing automation and lifecycle marketing
• Customer data platforms (CDP) and first-party data strategy
• Digital analytics, attribution, and A/B testing
• SEO/SEM, content strategy, and owned media
• Data-driven decision making and ROI governance

Strategic and Leadership:

• Strategic thinking and commercial acumen
• Brand strategy and repositioning
• Deep understanding of mass market customer behaviour
• Cross-functional leadership and influence
• Executive communication and stakeholder management

Personal Attributes

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.

Core Competencies

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