Group Head, Payment Control

Job Purpose

The Group Head, Payment Control, is responsible for providing strategic leadership, governance, and oversight over all payment control activities across the Group. The role ensures that vendor, contractor, employee, statutory, intercompany, and other approved payments are processed accurately, securely, promptly, and in line with approved policies, delegated authority limits, internal control standards, tax requirements, and applicable regulations. The role also strengthens the payment control environment by preventing duplicate, unauthorized, unsupported, delayed, or fraudulent payments while supporting efficient business operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop, review, and enforce Group-wide payment control policies, procedures, approval matrices, and standard operating guidelines.
• Oversee pre-payment reviews to confirm proper authorization, supporting documentation, budget availability, tax treatment, vendor validation, and compliance with procurement and finance policies.
• Ensure all payment requests are checked against purchase orders, contracts, invoices, goods receipt/service entry confirmations, payment terms, and relevant approvals before release.
• Provide independent control over payment batches, payment proposals, manual payments, urgent payments, advance payments, refunds, statutory remittances, and intercompany settlements.
• Monitor segregation of duties across invoice processing, payment approval, payment execution, bank release, and posting to reduce fraud and error risks.
• Coordinate with Accounts Payable, Treasury, Procurement, Tax, Internal Audit, Legal, Operations, and business units to resolve payment exceptions and control gaps.
• Approve or recommend the release of payments within delegated authority and escalate exceptions or high-risk transactions to senior management where required.
• Drive timely reconciliation of payment-related accounts, vendor statements, bank payment reports, payment clearing accounts, advances, and suspense accounts.
• Identify, investigate, and resolve duplicate payments, overpayments, unauthorized payments, unsupported claims, payment delays, rejected bank transactions, and payment exceptions.
• Strengthen controls around vendor master data, bank account changes, beneficiary validation, payment method selection, and fraud prevention checks.
• Ensure compliance with tax deductions, withholding tax, VAT, pension, PAYE, statutory levies, regulatory obligations, and company financial policies before payments are processed.
• Lead periodic control testing, process reviews, risk assessments, and remediation plans for payment activities across the Group.
• Prepare and present payment control reports, exception reports, ageing reports, cash-outflow visibility reports, and management dashboards.
• Support automation, ERP optimization, workflow improvement, and digital payment control enhancements to improve accuracy, transparency, audit trail, and turnaround time.
• Ensure proper documentation, record retention, audit support, and availability of payment evidence for internal and external audit reviews.
• Manage, coach, and evaluate the Payment Control team to ensure high performance, accountability, professional development, and adherence to ethical standards.

Requirements
Education and Work Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in accounting, Finance, Economics, Business Administration, or a related discipline.
• Relevant professional certification (e.g., ICAN, ACA, ACCA).
• Minimum of twelve (20) years of relevant experience.

Skills and Competencies:

• Strong knowledge of accounts payable, payment operations, treasury controls, internal controls, financial accounting, and audit requirements.
• Excellent understanding of approval workflows, delegated authority, three-way matching, vendor controls, bank payment controls, and reconciliations.
• High level of integrity, confidentiality, professional skepticism, and attention to detail.
• Strong analytical, investigation, reporting, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to interpret policies, identify control weaknesses, and recommend practical remediation actions.
• Strong leadership, stakeholder management, communication, negotiation, and team development skills.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, ERP reporting, dashboards, and payment monitoring tools.
• Ability to work under pressure, manage deadlines, and support high-volume payment cycles without compromising control quality.