Head of Credit Risk

Title – Head of Credit Risk

Salary – Competitive Salary Depending on Experience plus benefits

Location – Manchester

As the Head of Credit Risk of the business, the successful candidate will play a pivotal role in shaping the risk management strategy, ensuring the responsible underwriting of loans, delivering good outcomes for our customers and safeguarding the financial health of the firm. Reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer, you will lead a dedicated risk management function and collaborate with various departments to strike a balance between the customer’s needs and outcomes, commercial aims and risk mitigation.

Key Responsibilities:

Risk Strategy and Governance:

• Develop and implement a comprehensive risk management strategy aligned with the business objectives.
• Establish and enforce risk policies, procedures, and standards to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
• Collaborate with the executive leadership of the Business to communicate risk tolerance and risk appetite across the organisation.
• Support the business aspirations for asset growth with a balanced approach to asset quality and risk reward.

Underwriting Oversight:

• Oversee the underwriting process to ensure thorough evaluation and assessment of loan applications.
• Ensure that the risks of lending proposals submitted are properly identified, assessed and mitigated appropriately.
• Implement and enhance underwriting models, analytics, and decision-making tools to optimise risk-adjusted returns.

Credit Risk Management:

• Develop and maintain credit risk models to assess the creditworthiness of borrowers.
• Establish risk-based pricing strategies to balance profitability with risk exposure.
• Collaborate with the credit risk team to monitor portfolio performance and initiate proactive measures to mitigate credit losses.
• Be accountable for credit decisions and identify signs of stress to minimise the company’s exposure to bad and doubtful debt.
• Proactively review and recommend improvements to credit policy. With delivery through continuous scorecard development.
• Delivery of process, procedure and systems that can deliver market leading SLAs – as set out by the CEO.

Scorecard:

• Develop, build and manage the Organisations’ credit risk scorecard.
• Refine the credit risk model through the scorecard lifecycle.
• Develop champion challenge models in life to ensure continued “best customer outcomes”.

Compliance and Regulatory Affairs:

• Stay abreast of relevant regulatory changes and ensure the lending business is following all applicable laws and regulations.
• Maintain a deep and thorough understanding of Consumer Duty, notably delivering good customer outcomes and fair value.

Stress Testing and Scenario Analysis:

• Conduct stress testing and scenario analysis to assess the resilience of the lending portfolio under various economic conditions.
• Develop contingency plans and risk mitigation strategies based on stress test results.

Cross-functional Collaboration:

• Work collaboratively with other business units such as finance, operations, and technology to integrate effective risk management strategies and controls into business processes.
• Provide risk insights and recommendations to support strategic decision-making.

Team Leadership and Development:

• Training of 1^stline team and ongoing oversight of competency, including talent development.
• 2^ndline defence responsibilities, including periodic 1^st line audit.

Vendor management and selection:

• Management of lending operations, including application processing, customer onboarding, customer checks, proposal generation, underwriting (including affordability assessments), pay-outs, arrears and forbearance management, and bad debts.
• Managing the risk of lending in accordance with the Firm’s risk appetite, and the associated frameworks.

Skills and attributes:

• Analytical thinker, with deep understanding of credit profiles, experienced in underwriting with the ability to run a team of UW, ability to build and maintain complex credit scorecards.
• Ability to run a risk-based pricing model.
• An inclusive, transparent, mentor, who strives for continuous improvement.

Please Contact Vicky for more information.