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DEVELOPMENT BANK OF SOUTHERN AFRICA (DBSA) VACANCIES - 12 MAY 2026
DEVELOPMENT BANK OF SOUTHERN AFRICA (DBSA)
SENIOR CREDIT OFFICER: CREDIT ORIGINATION X6
Details
Closing Date
2026/05/21
Reference Number
DBS251023-8
Job Title
Senior Credit Officer: Credit Origination x6
Job Grade
00
Job Type Classification
Permanent
Location - Town / City
Midrand
Location - Province
Gauteng
Location - Country
South Africa
Job Profile (Downloadable)
Senior Credit Officer Origination.docx.pdf (290.54 kb) - 10/27/2025 11:42:00 AM
Job Description
The role is responsible for the origination and structuring of complex credit transactions across various sectors, e.g. infrastructure, sovereign, sub-sovereign, public sector projects for investment considerations in South Africa, the Rest of Africa and High Impact. This role is instrumental in ensuring that new transactions align with the DBSA’s mandate, risk appetite and strategic objectives. Applying technical and commercial expertise, and legal knowledge, the role supports decision-making by appraising new transactions, through conducting due diligence, credit assessment of financial and
non-financial risks, financial modelling and well-structured credit risk mitigation strategies. This role interacts closely with the Business teams and various Sector and Country Specialists in the origination process.
Key Responsibilities
Key Performance Areas:
Deal Origination and Structuring
- Appraise the origination of complex credit transactions from a pipeline of potential projects sourced by the
- Business teams, assessing transactions against the Bank’s risk appetite.
- Appraise, structure transactions to optimise risk-adjusted returns whilst achieving development impact.
- In conjunction with the Business teams, engage internally with project teams and externally with borrowers, government entities, project sponsors, and other key risk-transfer / credit enhancing stakeholders to assess
- optimal financing needs and develop tailored solutions.
- Provide credit advisory at inception, deal screening or early review stages for indicative quantification of credit.
- Serve as a key member of the project team during appraisal stage, deal implementation and financial close stages in pursuit of achieving the Bank’s key corporate and strategic objectives.
- Serve as a key member of the project team to develop innovative risk mitigation structures (e.g. blended finance
- instruments, sustainable finance instruments, credit enhanced structures).
- Conduct market and industry research as needed to inform risk assessment and credit decision-making.
- Collaborate with multidisciplinary sector experts and other teams to support client solutioning and the creditapplication process.
Credit Assessment, Financial Analysis and Risk Mitigation
- Undertake in-depth credit and financial analysis and due diligence on prospective transactions.
- Identify, mitigate and manage key quantitative and qualitative risks facing a prospective transaction.
- Apply credit rating methodologies aligned to underlying transaction structures to ensure that the credit profile is adequately encapsulated the risk-adjusted returns per policies.
- Contribute to due diligence activities, where required, including site visits, stakeholder interviews and due diligence data collection and synthesis.
- Collaborate with business, legal, technical and ESG teams to ensure comprehensive transaction evaluation.
- Prepare investment memos for new appraisals that succinctly communicates the overall credit opinion and
- recommended terms and conditions of the prospective transactions.
- Undertake in-depth financial and cash-flow analysis of portfolio companies, evaluating performance against initial projections and market benchmarks.
- Review portfolio performance reports, incorporating peer comparisons, sectors developments, and macroeconomic conditions affecting the Bank.
- Assess amendments to credit terms and provides recommendations for restructuring, covenant waivers, or rescheduling proposals as required.
- Conduct scenario analysis and stress testing on key exposures, feeding insights into credit risk appetite and capital allocation decisions.
- Support efforts to enhance risk-adjusted return through innovative solutioning of the prospective deal flow.
Financial Modelling and Analysis
- Build and/or review and challenge model assumptions in financial models for prospective transactions.
- Conduct cash flow analysis, stress testing, and scenario analysis to test financial viability and draw conclusions / make recommendations to mitigate financial risks identified.
- Assess financial compliance of key financial terms and/or recommend and implement credit risk mitigants (e.g. conditions, covenants, collateral, guarantees), as required.
- Perform peer benchmarking and sectoral credit comparisons in order to provide valuable insights for the review of the financial modelling assessment.
Portfolio Integration
- Ensure seamless transition of approved transactions into portfolio management.
- Monitor early-stage performance, facility and/or covenant compliance during onboarding of new clients.
- Provide feedback to portfolio, origination and risk teams on original learnings and risk signals.
- Maintain credit-related compliance with internal policies, regulatory standards, and investment mandates across all geographies.
- Maintain up-to-date credit ratings and internal loan classifications of new transactions, where required, prior to transition into portfolio management.
Strategic Engagement and Governance
- Liaise with teams to ensure seamless handover and continuous oversight of transactions post-disbursement.
- Support governance reporting by contributing to reports for Board committees, EXCO, and relevant committees.
- Participate in the maintenance and improvement of the credit value chain, identifying process inefficiencies and supporting enhancements to credit systems.
- Support audits by preparing necessary reports and documentation in line with best practice and standards.
Reporting and Monitoring
- Produce accurate, insightful reports that express key financial and non-financial metrics and analysis to support credit opinions for decision-making.
- Analyse data to identify trends, inform strategic decisions, and provide stakeholders with clear, actionable
- information that supports ongoing performance improvement and accountability.
- Utilise appropriate technologies and tools to enhance reporting efficiency and clarity, while also safeguarding the confidentiality and sensitivity of the information included.
- Maintain high standards of accuracy and timeliness to deliver reports that are timely, relevant and precise.
Key Measurements of Outputs:
- Percentage and number of credit memos for appraisals completed on time and in line with internal standards.
- Precision of internal credit ratings aligned with appropriate model methodologies and validated through backtesting or audit reviews.
- Timely identification of early warning indicators, escalating and actioned for new transactions in appraisal or deal implementation stage.
- Number of breaches identified and resolved and compliance rate for new facility agreements being onboarded.
- Average time taken to complete normal urgent risk assessment and recommend amendments or waivers.
- Quality of financial models built or reviewed, stakeholder feedback on model accuracy and usefulness for decision-making.
- Percentage of reports submitted on time with no material errors; percentage of submissions deferred as a result of substandard quality.
- Feedback from internal and external stakeholders on quality, communication, responsiveness, and problem-solving
- support.
Expertise & Technical Competencies
Qualifications and Experience:
Qualifications
- Degree in Economics, Finance, Accounting, Business Administration or Risk Management or related field.
Experience
- Minimum of 8 years’ experience in credit risk analysis, portfolio monitoring, or financial analysis within
- wholesale/investment banking or a development finance environment.
- Proven proficiency in credit analysis, financial modelling, and application of credit rating methodologies across similar credit portfolios.
- Strong capability in financial statement analysis, credit risk assessment, and the application of risk mitigation principles.
- Familiarity with development finance instruments and structured finance solutions is advantageous.
- Sound understanding of the credit lifecycle and loan value chain processes.
- Awareness of macroeconomic and political risk factors impacting country and credit risk is beneficial.
- Experience in credit origination, investment analysis, or structured finance is a plus.
- Demonstrated credit reasoning and credit writing skills.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to present complex concepts clearly and effectively.
- Demonstrated ability to build relationships, collaborate in teams, and manage stakeholder interactions effectively.
Desirable Requirements
- Experience working with municipalities, government programmes, or development finance institutions.
- Understanding and experience of sovereign risk, infrastructure finance, and public sector lending.
- Postgraduate degree in Finance, Economics, Accounting or a related field.
- Professional certification in Financial Risk Management, Chartered Financial Analysis or CA (SA) or equivalent.
- Familiarity with ESG, blended finance, and development impact frameworks.
Technical Competencies:
Risk identification & Assessment / Technical
- Diagnoses significant, unusual and emerging risks to which the business is exposed.
- Advises on applicable aspects of risk identification and assessment.
- Demonstrate advanced proficiency and up-to-date knowledge in specialised areas, applying this expertise to solve problems, drive innovation, and contribute to strategic initiatives.
- Continuously expanding skills to adapt to industry advancements and enhance organisational capabilities.
- Maintain high standards of quality and reliability, contributing to the seamless achievement of objectives.
Risk management policies and procedures
- Develops innovative approaches to managing significant business risks effectively and efficiently.
- Leads implementation, execution and monitoring activities.
- Advises on best solutions and foresees the impact of changes in regulations, policies and procedures for noncomplex and business issues.
Data collection and analysis
- Skilled in the use of analytical techniques.
- Is able to use judgement to decide upon the most appropriate analytical techniques according to the situation.
- Recognises underlying principles, patterns, or themes in an array of related information, and determine whether additional information would be useful or necessary.
- Through an in-depth understanding of the business environment, reviews outputs of analysis to identify anomalies and draws conclusions, relating these to operational circumstances.
- Can model a range of scenarios covering all potential business circumstances and highlight potential risks/ opportunities.
Planning and organising
- Is relied on to helps others plan and organise their workload.
- Uses effectively advance time management processes to deal with high workload and tight deadlines.
- Organises, prioritises and schedules tasks so they can be performed within budget and with the efficient use of time and resources.
- Achieves goals in a timely manner, despite obstacles encountered, by organising, reprioritising and replanning.
Financial acumen
- Makes sound financial decisions after having analysed their impacts on the organisation, partner agencies, and community.
- Awareness of utilising department budgets must be done in the most cost-effective ways.
- Understands management accounting reports and the processes by which financial resources are identified,
- obtained, allocated, managed, and accounted for.
- Is able to interpret management account reports in an operational/commercial context and take action as appropriate to maximise revenues and control costs.
Financial Modelling
- Demonstrating expertise in developing, analysing, and interpreting financial models to support strategic decision-making and business planning. This involves creating accurate and reliable models that forecast financial performance, assess business scenarios, and evaluate investments or projects.
Reporting
- Prepares both standard and non-standard reports to time and quality standards.
- Collate and analyses readily available data for inclusion in a report.
- Designs / customises reports to meet user needs.
Required Personal Attributes
Leadership/Behavioural Competencies:
Achievement Orientation
- Focuses on new or more effective ways of improving own work and meeting targets.
- Focuses on raising quality, customer satisfaction and revenues.
- Makes specific changes to systems and processes in order to improve efficiency and quality.
- Formulates own objectives and action plans in order to achieve a measurable improvement in the future.
Customer Service Orientation
- Tries to understand the underlying needs of customers and matches these needs to available or customised products and services.
- Adapts processes and procedures to meet on-going customer needs.
- Utilises the feedback received by customers, in order to develop new and/or improve existing services/products that relate to their on-going needs.
- Thinks of new ways to align DBSA’s offerings with future customer needs.
Self-awareness and Self-Control
- Withholds effects of strong emotions in difficult situations.
- Keeps functioning or responds constructively despite stress.
- May apply special techniques or plan ahead of time to manage emotions or stress.
Attention to Detail
- Double-checks the accuracy of information or work.
- Ensures that the work produced doesn’t contain any errors.
Analytical Thinking
- Identifies the cause-and-effect relationship between two aspects of a situation.
Strategic and Innovative Thinking
- Experiments with new approaches, tests scenarios, questions assumptions and challenges conventional thinking.
- Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others, leveraging internal and external sources of information, to build incremental revenue and growth opportunities.
Teamwork and Cooperation
- Acts to promote a friendly climate and good morale and resolves conflicts.
- Creates opportunities for cross-functional working.
- Encourages others to network outside of their own team/department and learn from their experience.
Policy
The Development Bank of Southern Africa will endeavour to make appointments in line with its Employment Equity Policy and Plan. Applications from suitably qualified designated groups, especially people with disabilities, are encouraged.
The DBSA corporate culture fit requires clear, logical and analytical thinking grounded in good interpersonal skills, a sense of urgency and results orientated execution of duties. The ability to work collaboratively and finding practical yet innovative solutions is critical to success in a work environment that demands emotional resilience, accountability and responsible risk taking and management.
The DBSA reserves the right to amend or remove vacancies in line with organisational requirements.
All vacancies can be viewed on the DBSA website (www.dbsa.org) under Careers.
PRINCIPAL DEAL ORIGINATOR: SOCIAL
Details
Closing Date
2026/05/19
Reference Number
DBS251208-1
Job Title
Principal Deal Originator: Social
Job Grade
17
Job Type Classification
Permanent
Location - Town / City
Midrand
Location - Province
Gauteng
Location - Country
South Africa
Job Profile (Downloadable)
Principal Deal Originator Generic _Job Profile September 2025 NS 001.docx.pdf (260.62 kb) - 10/9/2025 10:16:05 AM
Job Description
The Principal Deal Originator is responsible for formulating and executing the strategic objectives of the business in collaboration with the Head Coverage, whilst being accountable for deal origination, building and owning client and partnerships and developing projects for the DBSA, ultimately leading to bankable deals.
Key Responsibilities
KEY PERFORMANCE AREAS
1. Deal Origination
- Lead the development and execution of origination strategies and sector initiatives to drive infrastructure investment.
- Identify, prioritise, and manage key client relationships to maximize revenue and strategic impact.
- Build and maintain a robust pipeline of high-quality investment opportunities through proactive business development and deep sector expertise.
- Collaborate with project preparation and transaction teams to ensure successful deal structuring and closure.
- Navigate and resolve partnership challenges, staying informed on market products and competitor offerings.
- Leverage political, sectoral, and regional insights to inform strategies and broaden business opportunities.
- Foster strong networks with internal and external stakeholders to position the bank as a leader in infrastructure finance.
- Lead competitor and market analysis to inform strategic decision-making and maintain competitive advantage.
- Drive new business development, including fee-generating projects, ensuring consistent deal flow and bankability.
- Provide leadership, mentorship, and expert guidance to junior team members and represent deals at executive committees and boards.
- Prepare and provide documentation/reports for EXCO and Board(s) decision-making where applicable.
- Present at deal Committees where applicable, as and when required.
2. Business Development
- Drive business development to establish DBSA as the preferred lender, investor, and partner.
- Lead the drafting, approval and execution of strategies to build a strong pipeline of projects.
- Identify and originate viable projects by facilitating preparation, scoping, feasibility studies, and business plans to close deals.
- Develop approaches to secure concessional funding for infrastructure projects across Africa.
- Expand client base in target countries, fostering long-term relationships.
- Design and implement targeted marketing strategies to capitalise on growth opportunities for DBSA.
3. Relationship Management and Stakeholder Relations
- Build and maintain strong relationships with clients, global and regional private businesses, banking and multilateral partners and government officials to further develop specific investment opportunities.
- Facilitate continuous communication with clients/ projects that the DBSA has funded to adequately support the Division’s monitoring function.
- Network and maintain relationships with key internal and external stakeholders to develop specific investment opportunities further.
- Identify clients’ pain points and coordinate DBSA’s solution offerings to address them
- Undertake other tasks as assigned by the line manager, from time to time.
Key Measurements of Outputs
- Value and number of new business deals originated
- Value and number of project approvals, commitments, and disbursements.
- Value of infrastructure catalysed.
- Value of projects prepared and committed for DBSA approval.
- Value of funds under management secured (Infrastructure Delivery business).
- Quality of investment book (e.g., NPL ratio).
- Number of transactions that are committed for DBSA funding to black-owned entities (50% shareholding and above).
- Number of jobs created or "to be created" by projects - Direct and Indirect jobs.
- Quality of signed agreements/mandates.
- Clean Audit.
KEY INTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIPS (The list is not exhaustive)
- Divisional Executives and Unit Heads
- DBSA Committees, e.g., Deal screen, Investment Committees, Asset/Liability Committee
- Origination, Transacting, IDD, Project Preparation, Risk, Treasury & Finance
KEY EXTERNAL LIAISON RELATIONSHIPS (The list is not exhaustive)
- National Government
- Provincial Government
- Local Government
- Knowledge partners – Universities, think tanks, local/international organisations
- Investment partners – commercial, DFIs
- SMMEs
- Sovereigns
- Service providers – e.g. EPCs, advisors, O&Ms
QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE
Minimum Requirements:
- A postgraduate qualification or equivalent in Business (such as an MBA) or Finance (CA or CFA), or Engineering, or Economics.
- A minimum of 10 years of experience in infrastructure project financing, structured finance or corporate lending, preferably in a development bank, commercial bank or financial institution focusing on infrastructure.
- Experience in securing infrastructure investment deals in relevant sectors/geographies in SA and/or Africa.
- Experience in leading, initiating and developing new business strategies and opportunities to create a pipeline of development impact projects, ensuring deal flow and bankability.
- Proven track record in originating, structuring and closing large-scale infrastructure deals.
- Experience in securing deals of appropriate size for the sectors and geographies in question.
- Strong networks and relations with clients, global and regional private investors and banks to identify and source viable projects/investments.
- Successful track record in leading project teams with high-level stakeholders and qualified professionals.
- Comprehensive knowledge of the complex financial and regulatory environments across Africa.
- In-depth knowledge and understanding of the infrastructure market, financial markets and the macro landscape.
- Demonstrable experience in identifying client challenges and playing an active part in developing/structuring innovative solutions.
- Experienced communicator and negotiator (expertise at senior level).
- Strong negotiation skills with the ability to close deals.
- Proven experience in working with senior stakeholders in highly political environments in South Africa and the rest of Africa.
Expertise & Technical Competencies
TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES
a) Business Development
- Takes overall lead for proactive business development at the national and international level.
- Initiates, reviews, and interprets competitor environment reviews and takes actions accordingly.
- Formulates and modifies market approaches based on competitor analyses.
- Leads the formulation, development and implementation of the business development strategy to generate new business opportunities in public and private sector delivery of infrastructure.
- Identifies and develops new markets, products and clients.
- Leads the participation and presentation of an organisation at investment conferences and roundtable discussions.
- Coordinates business activities to ensure that investment initiatives are in support of government BEE strategies, broader national and regional economic development strategies.
- Promote compliance and alignment with the strategic imperatives of both individual clients and the organisation of investment and development interventions.
- Builds capacity to coordinate, control and manage the activities and efforts required for the implementation of the plan.
- Builds capacity to conduct project origination exercises.
b) Business Acumen
- Deep understanding of commercial drivers and can make decisions based on an assessment of alternatives concerning complex business situations.
- Deep understanding of economic priorities of South Africa and Africa and how they can be implemented to meet an organisation's strategic objectives.
- Deep understanding of the need to coordinate efforts with many government entities, the private sector, community groups and individuals to ensure effective implementation of new policies and regulations.
- Takes actions to fit business strategy.
- Assesses and links short-term tasks in the context of long-term business strategies or perspectives.
- Reviews own actions against the organisation's strategic plan; includes the big picture when considering possible opportunities or projects, or thinks about long-term applications of current activities.
- Anticipates possible responses to different initiatives.
- Understands the projected direction of the industry and how changes might impact the organisation.
c) Deal Origination
- Utilises extensive networks with developers, sponsors and consultants in DBSA-mandated sectors to identify project preparation opportunities.
- Conducts project identification, conceptualisation and preliminary structuring of projects and value preposition for DBSA.
- Applies analytical skills to understand the technical, environmental, institutional, financial and legal components of projects to present a structure to prepare the project.
- Understands the regulatory and policy environments and offers advice in preparing/structuring projects.
- Conducts market research, business analysis and profiling to identify opportunities for infrastructure development in SA, SADC and selected African countries.
- Provides and grows the opportunity for DBSA equity investments.
- Independently structures and negotiates, and concludes engagement letters, term sheets and facility agreements.
d) Project Management
- Defines, plans, and manages large and/or strategic projects, including those with a high degree of technical complexity, with impacts across the organisation and/or with national implications.
- Assembles and leads diverse and multi-disciplinary teams, ensuring maximum effective resource utilisation.
- Successfully manages substantial project budgets and reports directly to senior managers on the progress and results of projects.
- Identifies complex issues that need escalation and proposes appropriate corrective actions.
e) Solution Focus
- Identifies broad, highly complex problems based on a multitude of factors, many of which are complex and sweeping in nature, difficult to define and often contradictory.
- Creates procedures to articulate the nature of problems and to identify and weigh alternate solutions.
- Evaluates the effectiveness of solutions using approaches tailored to the situation.
f) Financial Analysis
- Serves as subject matter expert.
- Evaluates and determines fiscal, operational, and service impacts; analyses and evaluates legislation; and implements and evaluates statistical models in their subject areas.
- Demonstrates in-depth technical and administrative knowledge of the rules and regulations in the subject area and to defend analyses, testimony, and recommendations relating to a variety of issues before management and commissions.
g) Risk Management
- Drives integration and standardisation of risk management processes across the organisation.
- Advises on the application of the organisation’s risk management policies, industry best practices and constructs organisation guidelines.
- Analyses trends in risk management and internal control, evaluates implications, defines, and implements organisation-wide response.
h) Attention to detail
- Quickly identifies relevant and irrelevant information to support accurate decision making.
- Maps out all the logistics and details of a situation to ensure smooth and flawless implementation.
- Consistently identifies all relevant details that are not obvious in complex situations.
- Requires the highest standards for accuracy and quality for their work.
- Establishes processes to ensure accuracy and quality of services delivered by the team.
i) Negotiation
- Has an appreciation of cultural sensitivities and differences.
- Effectively employs a variety of advanced behavioural/interpersonal competencies to control the negotiation situation.
- Can take the lead in a variety of sensitive negotiation situations requiring high levels of tact and diplomacy.
- Can place a discrete negotiation situation within the context of a broader long-term relationship and is not threatened by conceding ground to protect the longer-term interests of DBSA.
j) Commercial Awareness
- Deep understanding of commercial drivers and can make decisions based on an assessment of alternatives concerning complex business situations.
- Deep understanding of DBSA economic priorities and how they can be implemented to meet DBSA's strategic objectives.
- Deep understanding of DBSA's core sector role in achieving DBSA's strategic objectives.
- Deep understanding of the need to coordinate efforts with many government entities, the private sector, community groups and individuals to ensure effective implementation of new policies and regulations.
Required Personal Attributes
BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES
a) Achievement Orientation
- Focuses on new or more effective ways of improving own work and meeting targets.
- Focuses on raising quality, customer satisfaction and revenues.
- Makes specific changes to systems and processes to improve efficiency and quality.
- Formulates own objectives and action plans to achieve a measurable improvement in the future.
b) Analytical Thinking
- Identifies multiple elements of a problem and breaks down each of those elements in detail, showing causal relationships between them.
- Uses several analytical techniques to identify several solutions and weighs the value of each.
c) Conceptual thinking
- Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others and not learned from previous education or experience to explain situations or resolve problems.
- Looks at things in a significantly novel way, breakthrough thinking.
d) Strategic and Innovative thinking
- Recognises opportunities or problems emerging in patterns and trends, and their impact on the business and profitability drivers.
- Applies learning from previous situations and experiences.
- Sees underlying causality in the current situation. Applies business acumen to make sound decisions.
- Recognises opportunities or potential problems, before they become obvious, by seeing the connections in a range of sources of information, including insights from outside DBSA.
- Restates complex knowledge in a way that makes it easier for others to understand.
e) Commercial Business Acumen
- Understands business fundamentals.
- Analyses and comprehends organisational goals and strategies.
- Understands tactical business fundamentals in the public sector environment and incorporates them into decision-making.
f) Teamwork
- Acts to promote a friendly climate and good morale and resolves conflicts.
- Creates opportunities for cross-functional working.
- Encourages others to network outside of their own team/department and learn from their experience.
Policy
The Development Bank of Southern Africa will endeavour to make appointments in line with its Employment Equity Policy and Plan. Applications from suitably qualified designated groups, especially people with disabilities, are encouraged.
The DBSA corporate culture fit requires clear, logical and analytical thinking grounded in good interpersonal skills, a sense of urgency and results orientated execution of duties. The ability to work collaboratively and finding practical yet innovative solutions is critical to success in a work environment that demands emotional resilience, accountability and responsible risk taking and management.
The DBSA reserves the right to amend or remove vacancies in line with organisational requirements.
All vacancies can be viewed on the DBSA website (www.dbsa.org) under Careers.