Lead Risk Manager & Portfolio Owner (Android Quick Loans) - Nigeria

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

FairMoney is constructing the foremost mobile banking platform and POS solution tailored for emerging markets. The company began with a digital microcredit application for Android and iOS devices and has expanded its services to include current accounts, savings accounts, debit cards, and advanced POS solutions for merchants and agents.

The Role

We are hiring a Lead Risk Manager & Portfolio Owner to oversee FairMoney’s Android Quick Loans portfolio in Nigeria. This portfolio is mature, high-volume, and strategically important. The role is akin to a mini-CEO for the portfolio, with responsibility for its commercial, economic, risk, and people outcomes.

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), 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, behavioral 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

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

Affordability, Experimentation, and Production Delivery

• Help formalize and operationalize Android affordability using bank-statement/MBS signals, transaction behavior, 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:

• Prioritize 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

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
• Mobilize 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, Gross Loan Book (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 (Probability of Default), LGD (Loss Given Default), EAD (Exposure at Default), vintages, roll rates, IFRS 9/ECL, pricing, offers, tenure, exposure, affordability, and NPV (Net Present Value)
• 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