National Credit Manager

Title: National Credit Manager

Department: Customer Finance

Location: Lagos or Abuja

About ENGIE Energy Access 

ENGIE Energy Access is a leading Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGo) and mini-grids solutions provider in Africa, with a mission to deliver affordable, reliable and sustainable energy solutions and life-changing services with exceptional customer experience. The company is a result of the integration of Fenix International, ENGIE Mobisol and ENGIE PowerCorner; and develops innovative, off-grid solar solutions for homes, public services and businesses, enabling customers and distribution partners access to clean, affordable energy. The PAYGo solar home systems are financed through affordable instalments from $0.14 per day and the mini-grids foster economic development by enabling electrical productive use and triggering business opportunities for entrepreneurs in rural communities. 

With over 1,700 employees, operations in nine countries across Africa (Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia), over 1 million customers and more than 5 million lives impacted so far, ENGIE Energy Access (EEA) aims to remain a leading clean energy company, serving millions of customers across Africa by 2025. 

www.engie-africa.com 

www.linkedin.com/company/engie-africa 

Job Objective 

EEA Nigeria is seeking a highly motivated and entrepreneurial National Credit Manager to be a part of revolutionizing credit and financial inclusion for the base of the pyramid. The role will work cross-functionally with our customer experience, product development, operations, marketing, and technical teams on the ground to help design, execute, assess and refine innovative consumer finance projects at EEA.

This position offers an incredible opportunity to make a direct impact on the lives of a largely unbanked customer base with limited access to traditional finance. The right candidate will be a fierce team player and committed people manager, with a passion for implementing new approaches and seeing them through from idea, to testing, to scale. As National Credit Manager, you could be based in Abuja or Lagos Nigeria with regular travel to the field. You will lead critical projects that can directly influence customers’ repayment behavior, their positive experience with our Products, and their ongoing loyalty to the brand—all crucial to the success of the business and in increasing access to financing for BOP consumers.

Key responsibilities  

1. Run EEA Nigeria Credit operations by:

   • Designing Nigerian Credit Strategies
     • Work closely with Nigerian Management team and Global Credit team to design innovative and data driven credit solutions for our customers
   • Managing core field teams
     • Take over management of the teams that lead our customer-facing credit and fraud interventions
     • Build effective, user- and field-friendly systems, processes, and tools that the teams need to make the largest and most cost-efficient impact possible on customer repayment patterns
     • Recruit and on board more staff to scale up the teams where necessary
     • Mentor the team to continuously build their critical thinking and execution skills so that they can maximize their contributions to EEA Nigeria and grow with the company
   • Building systems and processes
     • Improve the way we collect ongoing quantitative and qualitative data for each customer interaction to gain richer insight into their experience and repayment behavior
     • Coordinate with Customer Experience team to define protocols for how different teams interact with customers so that we encourage good repayment behavior in an inclusive and customer-friendly way
   • Implementing strategic projects
     • Design and implement A/B tests to identify the most powerful ways we can improve customer repayment behavior
     • Design and implement customer insight research projects, such as mapping the financial lives of households, to deepen our understanding of what drives repayment behaviors
     • Use the data insight from the above to scale any that are effective in improving customer repayment patterns

Deliverables and Activities 

 Establish a World Class credit function within the overall company
 Push the boundaries of microfinance, fin-tech & traditional financial services
 Develop innovative, data driven analytics, systems & practices so we can reach an underserved and primarily unbanked population
 Appropriately balance credit risk with inclusivity
 Build an industry leading data analytics & machine learning platform so we may best address our unique customer demands
 Create the tools, systems and processes that will lead to high customer repayment while attempting to mitigate sales disruptions so EEA can realize its mission of inclusivity
 Continuously refine and improve EEA’s data-driven credit strategy across underwriting, account management and default mitigation
 Innovate, design, pilot and deploy new underwriting technologies, policies & processes to improve repayment outcomes
 Design and implement A/B tests to improve the quality of the portfolio and drive innovation
 Support the customer facing field teams to improve portfolio repayment & minimize delinquency, default and fraud
 Identify risks, and gather insights and observations to inform business decisions that improve the quality of the portfolio from loan initiation to completion
 Support the Sales & Marketing Team by providing credit guidelines based on data and evidence-based research
 Lead the data science team in designing, testing, implementing, and measuring the performance of such scores
 Collaborate with other stakeholders such as the product, sales and marketing, and CX teams to determine pricing structures and eligibility requirements for new products and financial services

Required Skills & Experience 

• 5+ years of experience in leadership role at a microfinance or fintech operator in Leadership roles in Credit & Collection
• Proven track record of innovation, agility & entrepreneurial thought with development of building and growing an early-stage consumer finance business a strong positive
• Experience living, working & piloting new ideas with rural populations in Nigeria
• Strong leadership, strategy & project management skills with a focus on candidates that have designed, executed & scaled projects while growing a strong team culture
• Exceptional analytical skills and ability to synthesize analysis into practical strategy recommendations
• Empathy for the customer and commitment to inclusivity & affordability within the context of creating a profitable, scalable enterprise
• Outstanding written, verbal, and interpersonal communications
• Excellent judgement and ability to work independently with little supervision
• Highly motivated by customer happiness and a great team culture
• Ability to Think Big & Make it Happen
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in relevant field

Highly Desired Skills 

• Experience living or working in a rural economy
• Financial modeling skills - experience utilizing analytical techniques to drive data driven decisions
• Experience working with SQL, Tableau, R, etc.

ENGIE is an equal opportunity employer, promoting diversity and committed to creating an inclusive environment for all. All applications are screened based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without any regard to origin, age, name, sexual identity, orientation or preference, religion, marital status, health, disability, political opinions, union involvement or citizenship. Our differences are our strengths!