Job Description

If you are looking to excel and make a difference, take a closer look at us…

The Head of Regional IT Disaster Recovery is a high-impact leadership role responsible for the end-to-end resilience of the Hong Leong Group’s financial ecosystem. This includes Hong Leong Bank (Regional), Hong Leong Assurance (HLA), and Hong Leong Investment Bank (HLIB). The incumbent ensures 24/7 availability and regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions and sectors (Banking and Insurance). This role ensures that Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities meet the stringent and diverse requirements of central banks in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

Responsibilities:

Multi-Sector Regulatory Compliance & Audit Mastery

• Regional Banking: Act as the primary lead for DR compliance with BNM (RMiT), MAS (Singapore), HKMA (Hong Kong), SBV (Vietnam), and NBC (Cambodia).

• Capital Markets & Insurance: Ensure DR readiness for Bursa Malaysia and insurance-specific resilience drills for HLA&HLMT and HLIB&HLAM.

• Audit Defense: Serve as the primary point of contact for internal and external regional auditors. Defend DR strategies and provide evidence of recovery readiness for all regional entities.

• National Exercises: Lead annual PayNet DR exercises and PNB DR line testing

Resilience Operations & Cyber-Integration

• Cybersecurity Drills: Collaborate with Security Management to lead and execute high-stakes Cybersecurity Drills (Ransomware/Wiper scenarios).

• New System Onboarding: Provide expert advisory and define scenarios for Mock Run Tests for all new systems. Evaluate SIT/UAT results to authorize the first-time failover to DR.

• Complex DR Parameters: Execute DR exercises across varying regional parameters, ensuring cross-border data sovereignty and infrastructure integrity.

Risk, Governance & Business Continuity

• Business Impact Analysis (BIA): Authorize and validate the BIA under the IT portfolio, ensuring RTO/RPO targets align with business criticality.

• Risk Management: Take full accountability for the Risk Control Self-Assessment (RCSA), conducted twice yearly, ensuring all gaps are identified and mitigated.

• Call Tree Coordination: Manage and coordinate the Group-wide Call Tree exercises to ensure emergency communication readiness.

People & Culture Leadership

• Lead a high-performing team with extreme Emotional Intelligence, protecting staff well-being, managing regional workload, and fostering a culture of loyalty and technical excellence.

The "Command & Control" Voice (Communication)

• Inter-Departmental Synergy: You’ve built relationships with teams across HLB, HLA, HLMT, HLIB and HLAM. This is including regional HLB Singapore, HLB Hong Kong, HLB Vietnam and HLB Cambodia. This "social capital" is what makes DR work.

• The Drill Conductor: During a DR Drill, you’ll in charge as a conductor of an orchestra. You have to communicate clearly across departments (IT, Operations, Business units) to ensure everyone moves in sync. One wrong instruction, and a "test" turns into a "real disaster."

• The Presentation Power: You mentioned the candidate must "present about the DR scope." This means having the gravitas to stand in front of internal auditors and regional regulators to defend the bank's readiness. You have to be "100% solid" because any hesitation in your voice signals a lack of confidence in the bank’s safety.

Skills & Experience We Are Looking For:

• Experience: 10+ years in IT Infrastructure/DR, with at least 5 years in a Regional Management role within a Tier-1 Financial Institution.

• Regulatory Mastery: Proven track record in handling PayNet, BNM (RMiT), MAS (Singapore), HKMA (Hong Kong), SBV (Vietnam), and NBC (Cambodia) audits and exercises.

• Technical Infrastructure: Deep knowledge of On-Prem resiliency, SAN replication, and high-availability architecture across distributed data centers.

• Stakeholder Management: Exceptional communication skills to bridge the gap between technical teams and country-level C-suite executives.

For more job opportunities, please go to HLB Careers: https://hlb.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/HLBCareers/

About Hong Leong Bank

We are a leading financial institution in Malaysia backed by a century of entrepreneurial heritage. Providing comprehensive financial services guided by a Digital-at-the-Core ethos has earned us industry recognition and accolades for our innovative approach in making banking simpler and more effortless for our customers. Our digital and physical offerings span across a vast nationwide network in Malaysia, strengthened with an expanding regional presence in Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China.

We seek to strike a balance between diversity, inclusion and merit to achieve our mission of infusing diversity in thinking and skillsets into our organisation. Candidates are assessed based on merit and potential, in line with our mission to attract and recruit the best talent available. Expanding on our “Digital at the Core” ethos, we are progressively digitising the employee journey and experience to provide a strong foundation for our people to drive life-long learning, achieve their career aspirations and grow talent from within our organisation.

Realise your full potential at Hong Leong Bank by applying now.