Digital channels now carry a growing share of payments, savings and credit across the continent, and the institutions running them operate under constant pressure. Systems must stay available around the clock, thousands of agents must be supervised at a distance, and regulators expect firm evidence that fraud, money laundering and customer harm are under control. When controls lag behind product launches, losses and sanctions follow quickly.

This programme gives participants a structured way to manage that exposure. It starts with the operational risk framework for a digital provider, including the three lines of defence, risk appetite and loss data. It then follows the customer journey from registration through transactions, agent operations and settlement, identifying where people, process, system and external events can fail. Later sessions focus on fraud, cyber and data risk, outsourcing, regulatory compliance and the discipline of incident response, reporting and recovery.

Teaching is practical. Participants work on realistic scenarios drawn from mobile money, agent banking, digital credit and payment service provision, and use templates they can take back to their own organisations. By the end they will have drafted a risk and control matrix, a set of key risk indicators and a compliance calendar suited to their own products.

By the end of the programme, participants will be able to:

• Describe the main operational risk categories facing mobile money, agent banking and digital lending providers.
• Map digital customer journeys to locate process, system and people failure points.
• Run risk and control self-assessments and rate inherent and residual risk.
• Define key risk indicators and escalation thresholds for digital channels.
• Evaluate fraud, SIM-swap and social engineering threats and design preventive and detective controls.
• Apply AML, KYC, consumer protection and data privacy requirements to digital products.
• Manage third-party and outsourcing risk with telecom partners, aggregators and vendors.
• Plan incident response, business continuity and regulatory reporting.

The programme is intended for professionals who build, run, oversee or supervise digital financial services, including:

• Operational risk and enterprise risk managers
• Compliance officers and money laundering reporting officers
• Internal auditors reviewing digital channels
• Mobile money and agent network managers
• Digital product and payments operations heads
• Fintech founders and heads of digital lending
• Telecom mobile financial services managers
• Central bank and financial regulator supervisors
• Microfinance and SACCO digital transformation leads

Participants leave with practical tools they can use straight away:

• A risk and control matrix for a digital product, built from their own process map.
• A starter set of key risk indicators with thresholds and reporting lines.
• A fraud scenario playbook covering detection, response and customer communication.
• A compliance obligations register and monitoring calendar.
• An incident escalation and regulatory notification template.
• A vendor and agent due diligence checklist.

Learning is scenario-led and tied to the work participants do every day:

• Concise facilitator briefings on each risk area
• Process mapping workshops using real digital product journeys
• Fraud and outage simulations with timed decision points
• Group risk assessments presented back for peer challenge
• Take-home templates for registers, indicators and incident reports

Attendance of all sessions and completion of the practical exercises earns the CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion issued by Vision Reach Global Consultancy.