Head of Compliance

Our Values – We RACE IT

• Respect: We treat others with dignity and listen actively.

• Accountability: We own our responsibilities and deliver on our promises.

• Customer Centricity: We put clients at the heart of every decision.

• Excellence: We strive for high performance and impactful results.

• Integrity: We do the right thing—always.

• Teamwork: We believe in collaboration across teams, countries, and cultures.

About the opportunity:

Ecobank Rwanda is seeking a Head of Compliance to lead and strengthen the Bank’s compliance function, ensuring adherence to regulatory requirements, internal policies, and industry standards while fostering a strong culture of ethics, integrity, and risk management across the organization.

The role is responsible for Advise the Country Managing Director about how the activity of the Bank must comply with laws, regulations, and international best practices- and ensure the Bank is Compliant with all laws and regulations.

If you believe you have what it takes to uphold these standards and contribute meaningfully to our operational excellence, we encourage you to apply and become part of our dedicated team.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Governance & Independence of the Compliance Function

• Provide advice on laws, regulations to the bank and ensure its compliance with the related requirements.

• Adhere to the Compliance Charter.

• Implement the Group Compliance Manual and adapt it to local risks and legal and regulatory requirements.

• Advise business on specific compliance matters.

• Liaise with Group Compliance in order to advise the Bank on compliance best practices.

• Advises the compliance officers of emerging compliance issues and consults and guides them in the establishment of controls to mitigate risks.

• Lead and maintain an independent Compliance function with adequate authority, access to information, resources, and direct escalation rights to the MD, relevant Board Committee, and Group / Regional Compliance.

• Maintain and periodically review the Compliance Charter, Compliance Policy, and Compliance Monitoring Plan to ensure alignment with local regulatory requirements, Group standards, and the Bank’s risk profile.

• Provide independent compliance advice, oversight, and challenge to business and support functions, while preserving the second-line-of-defence role.

• Ensure compliance matters are escalated to the appropriate management and Board committees in a timely, balanced, and evidence-based manner.

2. Regulatory Compliance & Change Management

• Monitor evolution of the legal and regulatory framework and make impact analysis for the business. Ensure that, further to legal & regulatory changes, policies and operational procedures are updated accordingly.

• Ensure and review implementation of requirements related to new law or regulations.

• Monitor new and evolving laws, regulations, BNR directives, FIC requirements, regulatory guidance, and industry developments affecting the Bank.

• Conduct regulatory impact assessments and ensure timely implementation through accountable action plans, policy updates, procedure amendments, training, and control enhancements.

• Maintain a regulatory obligations register and regulatory returns calendar, including evidence of timely submission and escalation of breaches or risk of delay.

• Coordinate regulatory inspections, information requests, thematic reviews, management responses, and remediation tracking.

3. AML/CFT/CPF and MLRO Responsibilities

• Ensure that an adequate AML, CFT and CPF program is in place and issues tackled.

• Act as the Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO) for the bank.

• Responsible for all AML/CFT/CPF cases and ensure that they are properly handled.

• Organize in-house AML/CFT/CPF trainings to all staff.

• Liaison with correspondent banks ensuring that assessments are completed and requirements for information are responded to in a timely manner.

• Ensure that KYC documents provided by clients are complete and regularly updated where required.

• Review AML/CFT/CPF related wording in agreements.