Head of Credit

Job title : Head of Credit

Job Location : Lagos Deadline : October 21, 2026 Quick Recommended Links

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Purpose Statement

• The Head of Credit will have overall responsibility for CredPal’s credit strategy, underwriting framework, portfolio quality, risk appetite, and lending performance across consumer and business lending.
• This role will balance growth, risk, customer experience, and profitability, ensuring that the company scales its lending portfolio responsibly while maintaining strong credit quality and disciplined risk management.
• The successful candidate will be a commercially minded credit leader who can combine strong credit judgment, data, technology, and portfolio insights to drive sustainable lending growth.

Responsibilities

• Credit Strategy: Define and lead CredPal’s overall credit strategy across consumer and business lending products.
• Portfolio Ownership: Own the performance, quality, growth, and profitability of the credit portfolio, ensuring appropriate balance between risk and commercial objectives.
• Credit Policy & Risk Appetite: Develop and continuously refine credit policies, underwriting standards, approval authorities, limits, exceptions, and risk appetite frameworks.
• Underwriting Leadership: Oversee underwriting across consumer and business lending, ensuring consistent, data-driven, and commercially sound credit decisions.
• Business Lending: Establish robust frameworks for assessing business borrowers, including cash flow, financial statements, repayment capacity, sector risk, concentration, and collateral or security where applicable.
• Credit Decision: Drive the development and optimization of scorecards, decision rules, risk segmentation, credit limits, pricing, and automated decision strategies.
• Portfolio Monitoring: Establish strong portfolio monitoring and early-warning frameworks covering delinquency, defaults, PAR, NPLs, roll rates, vintage performance, concentration, and emerging risks.
• Risk-Based Growth: Partner with Product, Business, Sales, and Data teams to identify opportunities for responsible portfolio expansion while maintaining acceptable risk-adjusted returns.
• Credit Pricing: Support risk-based pricing strategies that appropriately reflect borrower risk, funding costs, expected losses, and target profitability.
• Fraud & Credit Risk: Work closely with Fraud, Risk, Data, Product, and Engineering teams to strengthen fraud detection, application controls, customer verification, and credit-loss prevention.
• Collections & Recovery Strategy: Partner with Collections and Recovery teams to improve delinquency management, repayment outcomes, restructuring strategies, and recoveries.
• Portfolio Analytics: Ensure strong portfolio reporting and analysis, translating credit data into clear actions and recommendations for Management.
• Stress Testing: Lead stress testing and scenario analysis to assess the impact of economic, market, sector, and portfolio changes on credit performance.
• Credit Governance: Chair or actively support relevant credit committees and ensure appropriate governance around major credit decisions, exceptions, and portfolio exposures.
• Regulatory Compliance: Ensure lending activities comply with applicable regulations, consumer protection requirements, internal policies, and credit governance standards.
• Technology & Automation: Drive the use of data, automation, alternative credit data, scoring models, and decision technology to improve credit quality and turnaround time.
• Team Leadership: Build, lead, and develop a high-performing credit team across underwriting, portfolio management, and credit analytics.
• Executive Reporting: Provide Management and relevant committees with clear reporting on portfolio health, credit losses, emerging risks, growth opportunities, and recommended actions.
• KPIs / Success Metrics
• Portfolio growth and risk-adjusted profitability.
• PAR, NPL, default, and credit-loss performance.
• Approval rate versus portfolio quality.
• Consumer and business loan portfolio performance.
• Vintage and roll-rate performance.
• Reduction in avoidable credit losses and bad debt.
• Turnaround time for credit decisions.
• Accuracy and effectiveness of underwriting and decision models.
• Performance of risk-based pricing and credit limits.
• Recovery and collections outcomes on delinquent portfolios.
• Compliance with credit policies, limits, and approval authorities.
• Quality and effectiveness of the Credit team

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Economics, Accounting, Business, Statistics, or a related discipline; a postgraduate degree is an advantage.
• Minimum of 8 years of relevant experience in credit, lending, risk, portfolio management, or underwriting, with significant leadership experience.
• Strong experience within banking, fintech, consumer lending, business lending, or financial services.
• Demonstrable experience managing sizable credit portfolios and delivering sustainable portfolio growth.
• Deep understanding of consumer and business credit underwriting, portfolio management, credit risk, and lending economics.
• Strong knowledge of credit policies, risk appetite frameworks, approval authorities, risk segmentation, and portfolio controls.
• Strong experience with business lending, including financial statement analysis, cash-flow assessment, sector analysis, repayment capacity, and exposure management.
• Strong understanding of portfolio metrics including PAR, NPLs, roll rates, vintage analysis, expected credit losses, defaults, and recoveries.
• Experience with credit scoring, automated decisioning, risk models, and data-driven lending strategies.
• Strong understanding of fraud risk, concentration risk, stress testing, and early-warning systems.
• Strong commercial and financial acumen with the ability to balance growth, risk, and profitability.
• Strong analytical capability with proficiency in Excel and experience working with BI, SQL, or other analytical tools.
• Strong leadership and people-management skills with experience building and developing high-performing credit teams.
• Excellent stakeholder-management skills with the ability to work across Product, Data, Engineering, Finance, Collections, Recovery, Operations, Compliance, and Executive Management.
• Strong communication and executive presentation skills.
• Relevant professional qualifications such as CFA, FRM, ACA, ACCA, ICAN, or other credit/risk certifications are an advantage.