Investment Associate at BFREE Africa

About the Role

• The Investment Associate is a core analytical role sitting at the intersection of portfolio performance, collections strategy, and investment decision-making. You will own the continuous analysis of BFree's debt portfolios, diagnosing performance, identifying the levers that drive collections outcomes, and translating data into actionable recommendations that the operations, collections, and investment teams can execute against.
• This is not a passive reporting role.
• We expect the Investment Associate to bring intellectual rigour, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine drive to understand why portfolios perform the way they do and what can be done about it.

Key Responsibilities

Portfolio Performance Analysis

• Maintain portfolio-level and cohort-level performance models across BFree's loan books
• Track key metrics (collection rates, cure rates, roll rates, IRR vs. underwriting) across portfolio vintages, products, and counterparties
• Produce regular performance reporting for internal and external stakeholders
• Identify performance outliers positive and negative and lead root-cause investigations

Collections Strategy & Optimisation

• Work closely with operations and collections leadership to design and evaluate interventions: channel mix, contact cadence, settlement strategies, agent allocation
• Design and analyse A/B tests and operational experiments to establish causal evidence for what drives collections uplift
• Model the expected impact of proposed strategy changes before deployment, and track realised vs. projected outcomes post-deployment.

Data & Tooling

• Query and manipulate large datasets using SQL; build and maintain analytical models in Python, R, or Excel
• Work with the data engineering team to define analytical requirements, flag data quality issues, and improve the analytical infrastructure
• Develop reusable dashboards and automated reporting where appropriate.

Requirements

Experience

• 2–4 years of experience in a quantitatively intensive role: consumer lending analytics, credit risk, structured finance, management consulting, investment banking, or distressed debt
• Prior exposure to debt collections, credit portfolio management, or NPL markets is a  significant plus
• Experience operating in African financial markets preferred.

Skills & Competencies

• Exceptional quantitative and logical reasoning: you can build a model from scratch, stress-test your own assumptions, and know when an answer doesn't pass the smell test
• Proficiency in SQL (required); Python or R for statistical analysis (required);
• Excel/Google Sheets financial modelling (required)
• Ability to design and interpret experiments: you understand statistical significance, selection bias, and the limits of observational data
• Strong written and verbal communication: able to translate complex analysis into clear, decision-oriented narratives for non-technical audiences
• Detail-oriented and self-directed: comfortable managing multiple work-streams with limited oversight in a fast-moving environment

Education

• MBA preferred, particularly from a programme with a strong finance, strategy, or analytics track
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a quantitative discipline (Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, Finance, Computer Science) also strongly considered.