Job Description

Career Opportunity: Lead Risk Manager (Credit Strategy & Analytics) for a Leading Digital Bank

I am looking for a highly analytical and strategic leader for a pivotal role at a full-service digital bank. Our client is a well-funded, mission-driven institution that has evolved from a micro-lender into a comprehensive financial platform, offering current accounts, debit cards, and POS solutions to reshape the financial landscape in emerging markets.

As the Lead Risk Manager, you will be more than a manager; you will be the strategic owner of the entire credit lifecycle for the unsecured lending portfolio. This role requires a unique blend of high-level strategic oversight and deep, hands-on quantitative analysis. You will be tasked with answering the critical question: how do we optimise our credit and recovery processes by untangling the complex relationship between underwriting decisions and collections performance?

We are looking for someone with a "systems engineering mindset" who can isolate variables, build sophisticated models, and drive a data-first, test-learn-iterate culture across the risk function.

Your core responsibilities will include:

• Leading the analytics and strategy to optimise credit processes and recovery rates.
• Developing, maintaining, and refining Expected Credit Loss (ECL) models to forecast performance and guide strategy.
• Managing a cross-functional team of analysts and specialists, fostering their growth and ensuring high performance.

This role is the right fit if you have:

• 5+ years of experience in credit analytics, credit risk strategy, or a similar data-driven role with a specific focus on unsecured consumer lending.
• Proven experience developing and improving ECL models, performing in-depth cohort and book analysis, and using A/B testing to drive strategy.

Their risk function operates from Johannesburg, South Africa, leveraging deep expertise from SA's banking “credit-risk” industry stalwarts. You'll drive the risk strategy for a lending platform processing loans daily across Nigeria, India & beyond.

This role is based in Johannesburg with a current 65% hybrid operating model.

Please send me a direct message for a confidential conversation about this opportunity.

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