Lead Risk Manager & Portfolio Owner

FairMoney is a pioneering mobile banking institution specializing in extending credit to emerging markets. Established in 2017, the company currently operates primarily within Nigeria, and it has secured nearly €50 million in funding from renowned global investors, including Tiger Global, DST, and Flourish Ventures.

In alignment with its vision, FairMoney is actively constructing the foremost mobile banking platform and point-of-sale (POS) solution tailored for emerging markets. The journey began with the introduction of a digital microcredit application exclusively available on Android and iOS devices. Today, FairMoney has significantly expanded its range of services, encompassing a comprehensive suite of financial products, such as current accounts, savings accounts, debit cards, and state-of-the-art POS solutions designed to meet the needs of both merchants and agents. **FairMoney thrives on its diverse workforce, bringing together talent from over 27 nationalities. This multicultural team drives the company’s mission of reshaping financial services for underserved communities.**To gain deeper insights into FairMoney’s pivotal role in reshaping Africa’s financial landscape, we invite you to watch informative video.

The role

We are hiring a Lead Risk Manager & Portfolio Owner to run FairMoney’s Android Quick Loans portfolio in Nigeria. Android is a mature, high-volume and strategically important lending portfolio. This is a mini-CEO role for the portfolio: you will be the delegated day-to-day owner of its commercial, economic, risk and people outcomes.

Job Description

Portfolio economics and business planning

• Own Android revenue, sustainable Gross Loan Book growth, risk-adjusted Gross Profit, economic profit and credit-risk performance
• Build and own the annual Android business plan and strategic roadmap
• Produce the monthly portfolio forecast and maintain a clear bridge between actual performance, budget and prior forecast
• Diagnose material variances and drive corrective actions with clear owners and deadlines
• Manage Expected Credit Loss, ECL/Revenue, approval and disbursal rates, Average Loan Size, tenure, exposure, FPD, roll rates, PAR, NPL, repeat value and CAC payback
• Partner with Finance and Portfolio Economics on loan-level and customer-level NPV, funding efficiency and performance attribution

End-to-end Android credit strategy

Own and continuously improve strategy across:

• New-to-Bank: low-and-grow origination, first-loan ticket, tenure, pricing and risk controls
• Returning: repeat eligibility, behavioural strategy, offer construction and exposure growth
• Top-Ups and Internal Consolidation: eligibility, incremental exposure, pricing, conversion and post-event risk
• High-risk segments: risk-box clean-up, pricing, short-tenure treatment and exposure caps
• Rejected-customer re-entry: controlled requalification using risk, affordability and alternative data

You will own the commercial application of PD cut-offs and calibration, pricing, offers, tenure, exposure limits, affordability, income-source treatment, fraud overlays, MBS treatments and customer-routing logic.

Affordability, experimentation and production delivery

• Help formalise and operationalise Android affordability using bank-statement/MBS signals, transaction behaviour, SMS-derived estimates, declared income and repayment history
• Translate affordability into amount, tenure, price, exposure, Top-Up and Consolidation decisions
• Design controlled A/B, multivariate and champion/challenger tests with explicit hypotheses, maturity windows, success measures and rollback triggers
• Measure full unit economics rather than only early risk metrics
• Translate strategy into decision-engine rules, parameters and implementation requirements
• Own replay, back-testing, validation, staged rollout, monitoring and post-implementation review
• Drive cross-functional dependencies through to production rather than stopping at analysis

Delegated decision rights

Within agreed appetite, budgets and authority, you will be empowered to:

• Prioritise and sequence the Android portfolio roadmap
• Approve and launch controlled experiments within agreed thresholds
• Scale, pause, modify or roll back strategies against predefined evidence and guardrails
• Reallocate team capacity across Android workstreams
• Escalate and resolve delivery blockers

You will escalate decisions that exceed delegated financial or risk thresholds, change company-level risk appetite, create material legal or customer-conduct implications, or materially affect another portfolio.

Team and cross-functional leadership

• Build and lead a senior Android credit-strategy team with clear workstream ownership
• Establish strong weekly and monthly portfolio rhythms
• Develop credible workstream owners and at least one portfolio deputy
• Reduce key-person dependency through documentation, controls and repeatable processes
• Work closely with Decision Science, Product, Engineering, Growth, Finance, Portfolio Economics, Collections, Fraud, Compliance, Legal, Operations and Customer Service
• Mobilise these partners around clear briefs, owners, timelines and expected economic impact

Requirements

• 6+ years in consumer credit risk, credit strategy or lending portfolio management
• Proven ownership of a material lending portfolio or product line, including revenue, GLB, risk and profitability
• Experience building annual business plans, monthly forecasts and corrective action plans
• Strong digital unsecured-lending experience; Nigerian or broader African-market experience is strongly preferred
• Advanced understanding of PD, LGD, EAD, vintages, roll rates, IFRS 9/ECL, pricing, offers, tenure, exposure, affordability and NPV
• Strong SQL capability and comfort with Python or equivalent analytical tooling
• Experience translating credit strategy into decision-engine rules and controlled production changes
• Evidence of building senior teams, developing successors and leading complex cross-functional delivery
• Strong executive communication and the confidence to challenge decisions with evidence

Benefits

• 25 days paid vacation, Sick & Public Holidays to B2B contractors.
• Remote (timezone must have significant overlap with CET).
• Training & Development budget.
• Paid company business trips

Recruitment Process

• A screening interview with one of the members of the Talent Acquisition team.
• Business Case Study
• Technical interview with Global Head of Android Lending
• Final Interview with Chief Credit Officer