Portfolio Jobs
Want to work with a fintech focused on creating a fair finance system? Check out these job openings across the globe.
Head of Risk - Consumer Loans (Nigeria)
Fairmoney
Nigeria
Posted on Nov 3, 2025
FairMoney is a credit-led mobile bank for emerging markets. The company was launched in 2017, operates in Nigeria & Zambia & Uganda, and raised close to €50m from global investors like Tiger Global, DST & Flourish Ventures.
Watch the way FairMoney is building Africa's money story here
🏦 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.
🧠 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.
🌍 Location
- Lagos, Nigeria (with national field verification oversight).
💬 Why Join Us
- Be part of a fast-growing digital bank redefining access to consumer finance in Nigeria.
- Lead the foundational credit operations for our flagship Consumer Loans product.
- Collaborate with world-class product and data teams shaping the future of responsible lending.
- Private Health Insurance
- Pension Plan
- Training & Development
- Remote work
- Paid Time Off