Job Details

With over 70 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 33,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Key Responsibilities:

Location: To be determined by the home country of successful candidate where World Vision International is registered to operate in any country from Southern Africa Region.

The Regional Audit Director – South Africa Region (SAR) provides strategic leadership to the Regional Internal Audit Team (RIAT) as part of the Global Internal Audit (GIA) in the SAR Region, under the leadership of the Senior Global Director, Regional Audit.

He/she has a dotted reporting line to each local board and leads GIA’s services across the whole SAR  region, covering 9 Field Offices with cumulated annual revenue of approximatively USD 275M+, ensuring that GIA delivers on its mandate to “ enhance and protect the organisational value and assist WVI to accomplish its objectives by providing risk-based and objective assurance, advice, and insight to improve the effectiveness of WVI governance, risk management and internal controls” .

Major Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership, Planning and Communication – 30%

• Strategic Leadership of four Regional Audit Managers and an extended team of 14 regional audit professionals, including:
  • Developing a five year risk-based regional internal audit plan in consultation with the national  and regional leadership and presenting this to the local Audit and Risk Committees(ARC) in the regional portfolio and GIA leadership annually for approval;
  • Preparation of RIAT annual budgets, ensuring concurrence by Regional Leadership and approval by local and WVI ARCs and ensuring charges to those offices are accurate and timely.
  • Oversee RIAT talent management, including recruitment, remuneration, staff training, development and well-being.
  • Oversee engagement supervision activities to ensure  internal audit deliverables are in line with the IIA’s  International Professional Practices Framework and are of high quality.
• In order to provide strategic, value-adding insights to the organisation, develop the RIAT’s strong understanding of all World Vision International (WVI) ‘s operations, the strategic risks (internal and external) that threaten the organisation’s achievement of its strategy and key objectives,
• Provide insight and pragmatic, forward-looking recommendations to key stakeholders such as Executive and Regional/National Leadership and Boards to manage critical risks that can impact the achievement of Organisational Strategy,
• Play a key role in developing and rolling out WVI’s combined assurance model in collaboration with other internal and external assurance providers (eg Legal, ERM and donor auditors).
• Play a key role in the GIA Extended SLT (Global Internal Audit’s Extended Senior Leadership Team) and  actively contribute to GIA strategy and operations
• Present quarterly to the Regional Leadership and the local Audit and Risk Committee (ARC) on audit results, providing strategic insights and key trend analyses.
• Play a key advisory role on the local ARCs and other partnership committees and forums as delegated by the Senior Global Director: Regional Audit.
• Provide support to the Investigations unit of GIA to investigate fraud allegations and unethical conduct
• Proactively seek opportunities to advise management and the board on matters related to risk management, internal controls and governance.
• Plays an active role in regional IPH (hotline reporting) teams ensuring that reported cases are thoroughly reviewed, discussed and resolved to mitigate risks and losses to the organization.
• Actively involved in regional projects and emerging issues an advisory capacity.
• Represent GIA at regional and national office level.

Promote and Ensure RIAT’s High Performance – 25%

• Regional leadership and oversight on the design, implementation and continuous improvement of the RIAT’s performance framework to ensure the Regional Audit Managers (RAMs) and RIAT deliver on all aspects of a professional risk-based internal audit function in line with evolving best practice and the IIA Standards.
• Ensure GIA’s RIAT services are rendered in accordance with the IIA’s International Auditing Standards, the Code of Ethics, GIA’s Charter and WVI’s policies and procedures;
• Continually enhance GIA’s ability to conduct both assurance and advisory reviews to add value and improve the organisation’s operations while considering the organisation’s key initiatives and strategic direction.
• Drive stakeholder relationships and communication and recommend/implement actions to achieve improvements; evaluate the advocacy efforts of the internal audit activity and determine key performance indicators to evaluate the success of the internal audit activity;

Promote and Ensure High Quality – 25%

• Evaluate and communicate to regional and global leadership and the local ARCs the collective outcomes of engagements and follow-ups performed by the internal audit activity. Assess the impact of residual risk; communicate management’s acceptance of risk to senior management and the Board.
• Recommend improvements to the organisation’s global, regional and field office governance policies, processes, structures, overall control environment, risk management strategy, strategic planning process, organisational behaviour, performance management measures and techniques and recommend actions to address risks related to the organisation’s business processes.
• Maintain and promote the highest conformance and ethical standards for GIA and promptly resolve any Quality Assurance or Peer Review areas for improvement
• Implement and continually improve the monitoring, follow-up and reporting of audit finding remediation.

Drive Innovation – 20%

• Continually drive and assess innovation/ improvement in RIAT’s written and verbal communication skills, soft skills, and projects.
• Partner with WVI leadership on organisational change intiatives in an advisory capacity and provide early input on governance, risk management and controls.
• Be alert to the work of and drive collaboration with other assurance providers.

Required Experience:

• At least 10 years of internal audit experience, preferably in a “Big 4” firm or large multinational, at least 5 of which should be at a senior manager/director level.
• Proven track record of relationship building at the senior level (Executive leadership, Audit and Risk Committees and Boards)
• Proven experience in risk-based internal audit;
• The ability to think strategically, make sense of complexity and apply “systems thinking”.
• Strong business acumen and understanding of functional linkages.
• Ability to interact with and/or manage cross-functional teams (eg Operations/Finance/Safeguarding/WASH);
• Effectively and independently lead diverse teams for success
• Strong commitment to quality and consistency of work, and to continuously drive improvements
• Highly developed written and verbal communication skills in English, excellent soft skills, and ability to motivate and influence all levels of management;
• Solid interpersonal skills, including listening, relationship building and the ability to influence at the highest levels in the organisation.
• Excellent MS Office skills (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio).
• Bachelor’s Degree in Finance,  Business Admininistration, Internal Audit or similar; MBA is a plus; CPA and/or Chartered Financial Accountant or equivalent; Certified Internal Auditor (CIA)

Preferred Experience:

• Cross-cultural experience in INGOs,  experience in using Audit Software,  Embedded Audit Tools/Techniques, Strategy Implementation
• Basic IT Audit and Fraud Investigation (CFE is a plus) Data mining & analytics, including financial and trend analysis

May work from home or in a hybrid home/office arrangement. Can be based in any country in which WV has operations in Southern Africa Region but preferably in a central time zone or in the region applicable to the appointment.

Ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally up to 30% of the time.

Applicant Types Accepted:

Local Applicants Only