HILDAH MUNOKO

I am a pleasant, social, resourceful person who values ethics and integrity and can work in a dynamic environment, with a profound drive to excel in all endeavors. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and business studies, a Certified Public Accountant of Kenya, and I am in the Project stage of pursuing a Master in Business Administration (Finance Option).

Besides, I have attended numerous short-term training courses, both in house and external. I have 13 years work experience rising to management level in the Banking sector. I possess a wealth of knowledge, skills and experience in card accounts reconciliation (big data transactions manipulation), card and merchants’ maintenance, quality assurance, audit and customer care management. I am well versed in compliance operations management regarding Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC), Sanctions, Proceeds of Crime and Anti Money Laundering Act (POCAMLA), Data Protection Act, amongst others. In addition, I have an appreciable experience in handling operations management and human resource line administration. Currently am an accountant of Namenge Brothers Limited. 

Having risen through the ranks to a management level in card accounts reconciliation, quality assurance, analysis and reconciliation of big and complex transactional and financial data, all demanding tight timelines, I now look to new challenges. I can only look towards role in finance and administration in a dynamic organization that incorporates professional advancement in accounts, finance and audit. 

 Further, I look forward to acquiring new competencies, skills, and knowledge in accounting as I drive towards achieving professionalism and excellence in delivering efficient services to the internal and external customers of my employer.

Accountant 

Namenge Brothers Limited; January 2021 – To date

Key Achievements:

• Timely preparation and presentation of accurate management reports and financial statements. 
• Nil erroneous payments to suppliers due to keen verification of vouchers to check for their authenticity. 
• 100% tagging of all company assets and safe custody of company’s financial records.
• Timely preparation and filing of statutory returns hence nil income leakages through penalties.
• Constant monitoring of actual and budgeted to establish the reasons for the variances 
• 100% bank reconciliation and any disparity explained. 

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Preparing company budget and monitoring the implementation. 
• Timely and accurate to cash book reconciliation; maintaining petty cashbook and efficient utilization of the funds, verifying vouchers of their authenticity and receipting transactions, 
• Carrying out bank reconciliation, management account reporting, preparation of monthly and quarterly financial reports, adherence of company policies and procedures,
• Timely preparation and filing returns.
• Safe custody of the company’s assets and financial records.

Team leader- Card Reconciliation (Card Operations) 

Absa Bank Kenya Plc. (Former Barclays Bank of Kenya Ltd); April 2018 – December 2020

Key Achievements:

• Proactive frustration of significant attempts to perpetrate financial crime risks in the bank by successfully reconciling cardholder transactions accurately and reported on time.
• Improved bank processes and procedures through recommendations, which harnessed opportunities to increase revenue and reduction in operating costs through root cause analysis.
• I streamlined the reconciliation process, which resulted in increased efficiency and effectiveness. I eliminated outstanding queries. This was realized through recommendation of process improvement from manual to automated which resulted in the department having nil due to improved efficiencies and faster/easier tracking of customer queries. 

          My team realized a 5% reduction in stationery costs and 15 % increase in productivity for a period of             three consecutive years. In addition, I have managed the people I work with and enhanced         departmental efficiency (i.e. I championed adoption of automated reconciliation as opposed to manual)    because of process automation.  In addition, using my team members, I have effectively addressed all electronically and telephone customer queries by establishing a route cause analysis to avoid repeat occurrences. 

• Enhanced adherence to the law and compliance regulatory requirements, in support of business strategy.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Timely reconciliation, review of reconciled General Ledgers and reporting the Management Information (MI).
• Timely preparation, submission/ reporting to finance department the end month profit and loss.
• Coming up with initiatives to improve efficiency, increase revenue and reduce costs.
• Team management and growing departmental productivity are also key tasks in the department.
• Monitoring and review of center costs, following up with branch networks for speedy resolution of outstanding reversals or actioning of outstanding cases 
• Conducting root causes analysis to identify risks, treatment solutions as well as reporting reporting.
• Stakeholder management and engagements. 
• Communicating and facilitating right culture and ethical behavior within the department.

Team leader – Card, Merchant Maintenance & Direct Debits (Card Operations)

Barclaycard International; June 2015 – March 2018

Key Achievements:

• Added value to the organization by implementation of quality solutions and risk mitigating recommendations. 
• Assisted the bank improve its processes, procedures and developed efficient and effective frameworks. 
• Empowered staff via sharing best practices to ensure the strategic objective has been met.
• I solved cardholder and merchant queries or complaints, whilst addressing the root cause. My key achievements were delighting clients, client retention and increase of client credit card knowledge on how to guard against fraud. 
• As a Team leader Maintenance and Direct Debits Operation Analyst, I was charged with the responsibility of ensuring that cardholder and merchant information personal/ company information data base is current and up to date. Due to my broad and in-depth knowledge of cardholder and merchant issues, I managed to detect an increase in customer complaints through feedback data that had indicated a marginal increase in card closures and decrease in transactions over time. 

Through a process re-engineering approach, I did a proposal that led to my appointment to lead a departmental team whose mandate was to have a look at card operations with a view to re-engineering our profound suggestions in the Card Operations System in Kenya and eventually obtained the necessary approval. This led to the partnership with the Card Products Team in creating innovative value addition products such as Loan on Phone (LOP) and Easy Instalment Payments (EIP). 

This products development originated from customer complaints and feedback data that I was able to analyze and identify as due to increased card closures. This led to the realization of 25% decline in customer queries and complaints. Arising from my professional guidance, the Maintenance and Debits Operation Team also enhanced successful management of delicate and urgent customer requests arising from the excellent working relationships and ultimately improving the customer confidence towards ABSA products. 

In addition, I successfully reviewed and streamlined departmental processes and manuals consequent to introducing new products and change of systems and obtained the necessary approvals and final documentation. This streamlining ensured 100% processing of all logged in customer instructions, queries and complaints resulting in steering the team to achieving quality resolution of all logged in cases on daily basis.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Conducted compliance monitoring reviews within the bank as per the compliance monitoring plan that ensured adherence to laws and regulations.
•  Successful resolution of all logged queries and complaints from all customers wherever situated. 
• Quality resolution of the logged issues within the set standards whilst ensuring new team members receive the pre-requisite training within a reasonable time efficiently, so they undertake their duties soon after joining. 

It also entailed my carrying out root cause analysis to ensure successful management of some very delicate and urgent customer requests whose success requires excellent working relationships with supporting teams. 

• Review, analysis and presentation of statistics as generated during query/complaint resolution with the ultimate goal of improving the customer confidence. 
• Managing and monitoring of individual team members’ productivity and negotiating with other departments on seamless flow of work and speedy actioning / resolution of customer instructions.

Maintenance Supervisor (Barclaycard International)

Absa Bank Kenya Plc. (Former Barclays Bank of Kenya Ltd); November 2010 - June 2015 

Key Achievements:

• I initiated, tested and deployed cost-cutting process changes of automating or scanning of customer direct debit instructions away from submission of hard copies which improved turn-around times from 72 hours to 24 hrs. 
• I also enhanced my negotiation skills by fostering a healthy working environment within the team and together with other teams, to ensure delivery of set objectives within Service Level Agreement. 
• Attained 100% adherence to laid down processes and procedures to maintain Green Audit Reports with prompt closures of any arising issues as well as timely adoption of agreed-upon recommendations. 
• 100% resolution of all logged- in customer cases, queries and complaints in my department.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Provision of effective and efficient services to Barclaycard holders, Merchants, as well as internal customers via the resolution of logged queries and complaints. Quality resolution of logged issues within the set standards whilst ensuring new team members receive the pre-requisite training within a reasonable time so as to efficiently undertake their duties. 
• Management of delicate and urgent customer requests fostered by excellent working relationships with supporting teams. 

Card production Supervisor (Barclaycard International)

Absa Bank Kenya Plc. (Former Barclays Bank of Kenya Ltd); February 2009 – November 2010

Key Achievements:

• Added value to the organization by implementation of quality solutions and risk mitigating recommendations. 
• Assisted the bank improve its processes, procedures and developed efficient and effective frameworks.
• Empowered staff via compliance training, subsequently creating risk and compliance awareness among bank staff.
• I successfully led my team in pioneering and implemented critical changes of processes and procedures within Card production department; delivery of cards directly from the supplier de LaRue to all the Barclays bank branches country-wide through courier services as opposed to delivering the cards from de LaRue to Barclays  card production head office for sorting and distribution to the branches. 

This recommended process improved effectiveness and efficiency by achieving 20% reduction in delivery costs and reduction of turnaround time to deliver embossed cards to the branch networks from 72hours to 24hours.  Fraud risk exposure was significantly reduced.

• Realized 100% conformity to the laid down processes and procedures and this enabled them to achieve a green audit reports due to prompt closures of any arising issues as well as timely adoption of agreed-upon recommendations. 
• Maintained an up to date stock accounting with an optimal stock levels by ensuring replenishments are done in time with a zero percent incidence of depleted stocks.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Accurate and timely processing of customers’ Barclaycard requests,
• Accurate production, delivery and reconciliation cards to the branch network within the Service Level Agreement. 
• Maintaining  optimal stock levels for plastic cards and reorder level observed
•  Management of team members’ workflow.

Barclaycard Quality Assurance Analyst  

Absa Bank Kenya Plc. (Former Barclays Bank of Kenya Ltd); April 2008 – February 2009

Key Achievements:

• Timely identification mis posts and followed through to ensure remediation for the same has been made in the earliest possible opportunity hence I safeguarded the bank from financial loss and reputational damages.
• I contributed significantly to reduction of costly errors, customer complaints and fraud within the bank Card Issuing and Acquiring operations.

Duties and Responsibilities: 

• Conducting audit on all customer payments to mitigate possible losses to the bank. My personal brief had emphasis on large transactions and foreign currency. 
• Development of control measures on procedures/processes that could be areas of loss to both customers and the bank and ensuring immediate reversal or correction of any mis-posts.

Compliance Coordinator   (Gilgil Branch)

Barclays Bank of Kenya Ltd; September 2007 – March 2008

Key Achievements:

• I made effective call backs to loan applicants and their employers as a control tool to verify their authenticity through which I was able to detect an attempted fraud on scheme loan worth Ksh 760,000. 
• Quality processing of customer instructions leading to improved customer confidence, satisfaction and referrals, the Gilgil branch realized 8% growth in sales. 

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Vetting of customer details/ authenticity of the applicants as a way of mitigating any possible fraud. 
• Undertaking initial customer loan scoring and vetting at branch level so as to mitigate any customer complaints upon final approval by the Operations team and responding to logged customer and staff queries within the required Service Level Agreement. 

Accountant 

Valere Business Systems Ltd; (February 2007 – August 2007)

 I was responsible for bookkeeping, controlling petty cash, timely data entry, preparing company financial reports and submitting statutory returns as required under laws of Kenya and reporting to the Finance Director on financial matters that relate to the company.  

My key achievements were realized accurate and timely up to date bookkeeping and submission of statutory deductions and provided management information for decision making. This resulted in protecting the company from income leakages through fines for non-compliance.

Bank Clerk

 Citi Bank; (November 2006 – January 2007)

 I worked in share control unit for Mumias offer for sale where I did quality reconciliation of applications against payments received and timely refund of un allotted shares to customers with nil errors.

• Master of Business Administration (Finance) -University of Nairobi; Year 2018 -Ongoing Project stage.
• Bachelor of Arts (Economics and Business Studies) -Kenyatta University; Year 2005
• Certified Public Accountant of Kenya- Strathmore University & Visions Institute of Professionals ;Year 2005
• Computer Proficiency Training -Strathmore University - Advanced MS Excel, Quick Books, Sage Accounting