Head of Risk - Consumer Loans at FairMoney

Role Overview

• We are seeking a Head of Risk (Consumer Loans - Nigeria) to lead the credit underwriting and risk operations for our newly launched Consumer Loans product.
• The goal is to maintain a low-risk portfolio through a blend of digital processes and manual verification layers across contact, address, income, and employment checks.
• This role is critical to ensuring credit quality, fraud prevention, and operational excellence in Nigeria — while collaborating closely with product, tech, data science, and central risk teams to build a scalable and compliant lending engine.

Core Mission

To design, implement, and oversee a manual and semi-automated underwriting framework that ensures:

• Robust credit and fraud checks across all consumer loan applications.
• Compliance with internal risk appetite and ECL/GP targets.
• Seamless integration between operational verification and product automation.

Key Responsibilities

Credit Underwriting Leadership

• Own the credit underwriting operations for Consumer Loans in Nigeria
• Supervise and mentor a team of manual underwriters, ensuring consistent decision quality and SLA adherence
• Oversee manual verifications for:
  • Contact verification (confirm customer reachability)
  • Address verification (physical validation of declared residence)
  • Reference verification (cross-checking contact references)
  • Income verification (bank statements, salary inflows, stability)
  • Employment verification (payslips, HR/employer confirmation)
• Review bureau reports, bank statements, and internal data for red flags or inconsistencies
• Establish clear decline and escalation rules for suspicious or non-compliant applications

Employer Risk Ranking System

• Develop and maintain an Employer Risk Ranking Framework:
  • Rank employers from low-risk (e.g., government, large corporates) to high-risk (e.g., small businesses, informal employers)
  • Continuously refine based on observed loan performance and repayment patterns
  • Collaborate with data science to encode the framework into automated decision models

Risk Monitoring & Portfolio Oversight

• Track and maintain portfolio performance against risk appetite (FPD, DPD, roll rates, loss rates)
• Identify trends and root causes behind performance deviations
• Recommend product, policy, or pricing adjustments to ensure healthy unit economics and portfolio profitability
• Collaborate with central risk and data science to enhance predictive models and automation rules

Fraud Detection & Prevention

• Implement rules-based and manual fraud detection checks
• Define and evolve guardrails to prevent identity fraud, bad-intent borrowing, or syndicate activity
• Ensure underwriters actively screen for behavioral red flags and maintain internal fraud databases
• Work with central fraud, tech, and KYC teams to improve system-based prevention (e.g., device linking, document fraud detection)

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product, Tech, Credit Risk, and Data Science to:
  • Design scalable verification workflows
  • Build automation tools for risk checks
  • Align on performance metrics and model integration
• Provide local market insights to global and regional teams to prevent local pitfalls and regulatory blind spots

Governance & Reporting

• Maintain operational risk controls and decision logs
• Report on daily/weekly portfolio trends, underwriting productivity, and fraud metrics
• Participate in risk review meetings and credit committee discussions
• Ensure all operations comply with CBN guidelines and internal credit policy

Requirements
Ideal Candidate Profile

Experience

• 7-10 years in credit underwriting, portfolio risk, or consumer lending operations
• Proven experience leading manual underwriting for large-ticket, unsecured loans
• Demonstrated ability to balance credit quality vs growth
• Exposure to bureau data, income verification, and fraud detection frameworks

Skills & Attributes

• Strong understanding of consumer lending economics, ECL/GP drivers, and affordability assessment
• High analytical ability; able to interpret bank statements, bureau reports, and financial indicators
• Excellent leadership and communication skills — able to build and manage a results-driven underwriting team
• Deep familiarity with Nigerian credit market dynamics and local fraud patterns
• Comfortable collaborating across tech and non-tech teams to improve decision systems

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business Administration, or related field
• Advanced degree or professional certification (e.g., CIBN, ACIB, CFA, FRM) is an advantage

Key Outcomes / Success Metrics

• Portfolio FPD and DPD performance within defined risk appetite
• Decline accuracy (low false positives; minimal missed fraud cases)
• Efficient verification turnaround time (TAT)
• Employer risk ranking and manual underwriting accuracy
• Contribution to model calibration and automation improvements