Lead Fintech Oversight & Governance

Job Description

Reporting to the Group Chief Corporate & External Affairs Officer, the Lead Fintech Oversight & Governance is accountable for leading Safaricom’s regulatory strategy and institutional engagement framework across its digital financial services and fintech ecosystem, ensuring sustainable innovation, regulatory resilience, and long-term license to operate within an increasingly complex financial services landscape.

The role shapes and executes a forward-looking regulatory agenda covering digital payments, credit, savings, interoperability, open banking, data governance, AI-enabled financial services, and emerging fintech models. It drives proactive, structured engagement with the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and other domestic, regional, and global financial regulators to secure timely approvals, influence policy direction, and manage systemic regulatory risk.

The role embeds regulatory foresight into product design, commercial strategy, and platform expansion by partnering closely with M-Pesa, Financial Services, Technology, Risk, Compliance, Legal, Strategy, and Innovation teams. It ensures that regulatory considerations are integrated early in innovation cycles, accelerating time-to-market while safeguarding prudential integrity and consumer protection standards. Through disciplined horizon scanning, regulatory scenario planning, and fintech intelligence capability, the role anticipates shifts in prudential regulation, financial inclusion policy, digital identity, cross-border payments, embedded finance, and platform governance. It translates early signals into structured engagement strategies that protect revenue continuity, unlock new growth opportunities, and strengthen Safaricom’s credibility as a trusted financial ecosystem player.

The Lead Fintech Oversight & Governance safeguards Safaricom’s financial services license to operate while enabling strategic growth ambitions, positioning Safaricom as a responsible fintech leader within Kenya and across its subsidiary markets.

The Lead Fintech Oversight & Governance is accountable for shaping Safaricom’s external regulatory strategy, influencing policy direction and maintaining strategic relationships with financial regulators to secure and sustain the Group’s licence to operate. It does not own operational execution of regulatory requirements within Financial Services.

Therefore, the Lead Fintech Oversight & Governance is strategically accountable for:

• Fintech Regulatory Strategy & Framework: Lead the development and execution of Safaricom’s end-to-end fintech regulatory strategy, ensuring alignment with commercial ambitions, evolving financial sector policy, and prudential requirements across digital financial services.
• Regulatory & Central Bank Engagement: Drive structured, senior-level engagement with the Central Bank of Kenya and other financial regulators to secure approvals, shape regulatory interpretation, and proactively manage systemic regulatory risk.
• License to Operate & Prudential Governance: Safeguard Safaricom’s financial services license to operate by ensuring robust compliance positioning, regulatory readiness, and alignment with consumer protection, capital, and operational risk expectations.
• Fintech Policy Shaping & Industry Influence: Influence national and regional fintech policy development through evidence-based submissions, coalition building, and structured stakeholder engagement to enable innovation and financial inclusion.
• Product & Innovation Regulatory Enablement: Embed regulatory foresight into product design, commercial planning, and new fintech initiatives to accelerate time-to-market while mitigating regulatory exposure.
• Horizon Scanning & Regulatory Intelligence: Establish forward-looking regulatory intelligence capability to anticipate shifts in digital finance, open banking, interoperability, AI-driven services, and cross-border financial models.
• Cross-Functional Regulatory Integration: Partner with M-Pesa, Financial Services, Technology, Risk, Legal, Compliance, and Strategy teams to ensure regulatory considerations are integrated into enterprise decision-making and transformation initiatives.
• Subsidiary Oversight, Governance & Enablement: Provide structured oversight and strategic support to subsidiaries, ensuring alignment to Group standards while enabling effective local execution within market context.
• Risk, Governance & Control Ownership: Embed and maintain effective risk, governance, compliance, and control practices within the function by proactively identifying and mitigating operational, regulatory, financial, people, technology, and reputational risks. Ensure adherence to internal policies, regulatory requirements, audit actions, and enterprise governance frameworks while driving accountability, ethical practices, and a strong controls environment across all areas of responsibility.

Anchored in Safaricom’s ambition to lead Africa’s digital financial services evolution, the role ensures Safaricom engages regulators from a position of credibility, preparedness, and strategic influence, enabling growth with regulatory confidence rather than constraint.

Responsibilities

• Health and Safety

• Uphold the company code of conduct, policies and procedures, ensuring integrity and accountability in every aspect of your work.

• All employees have a responsibility to adhere to safety, health, and wellbeing policies, guidelines and procedures in all actions and decisions.

• Fintech Regulatory Strategy & Framework

• Develop and continuously refine Safaricom’s integrated fintech regulatory strategy aligned its ambitions and digital financial services expansion.

• Define the regulatory positioning across payments, credit, savings, interoperability, open banking, embedded finance, and emerging fintech models.

• Translate regulatory obligations into structured operating frameworks that enable innovation while maintaining prudential integrity.

• Lead regulatory scenario planning to assess impact of policy shifts on revenue, product pipelines, and capital exposure.

• Ensure alignment between regulatory strategy and commercial growth priorities across M-Pesa and broader DFS portfolios.

• Regulatory & Central Bank Engagement

• Lead structured, senior-level engagement with the Central Bank of Kenya and other financial regulators to secure licenses, approvals, and product clearances.

• Build and maintain trusted institutional relationships that strengthen Safaricom’s credibility as a responsible fintech ecosystem player.

• Oversee preparation of high-quality regulatory submissions, impact assessments, and consultation responses.

• Manage complex regulatory negotiations, inspections, and supervisory reviews.

• Escalate and manage emerging regulatory risks at executive and Board level where required.

• License to Operate & Prudential Governance

• Safeguard Safaricom’s financial services license to operate through proactive regulatory compliance positioning and oversight.

• Ensure alignment with prudential requirements including capital adequacy, consumer protection, data governance, AML/CFT, and operational resilience standards.

• Partner with Risk, Compliance, and Legal to manage regulatory findings, remediation plans, and supervisory commitments.

• Monitor evolving supervisory expectations and embed regulatory readiness into business processes.

• Provide executive assurance on regulatory exposure and mitigation strategies.

• Fintech Policy Shaping & Industry Influence

• Shape national and regional fintech policy outcomes through evidence-based advocacy and structured stakeholder engagement.

• Represent Safaricom in industry coalitions, regulatory forums, and multi-stakeholder policy platforms.

• Develop policy position papers that align commercial objectives with public interest and financial inclusion goals.

• Influence emerging frameworks in digital identity, interoperability, open finance, cross-border payments, and AI-enabled financial services