Head of Collections and Credit Risk

**Head of Collections and Credit Risk (JB3258)**: Durban, Kwa Zulu Natal - Accounting/Finance

**Head of Collections and Credit Risk (JB3258)**

**Durban**

**Market Related**

The role primarily focuses on strategic leadership direction for Collections and Credit to ensure sustainable delivery of strategic and operational objectives across the credit and collections life cycles. Thriving under pressure and taking pride in maintaining high levels of performance, he/she should enjoy a fast-paced, professional environment.

**Experience required**
- Bachelor’s degree with Honours, MBA or equivalent preferable
- Extensive financial services collections and credit experience, minimum 10 years’ experience in a senior leadership role preferably at a financial services institution
- Experience in managing a collections team (soft and hard collections) with the ability to establish and maintain an efficient and productive working environment based on continuous and effective staff communication
- Collection’s strategy experience with direct experience in a customer service environment and ability to take full accountability for the end to end collections and credit processes
- Knowledge of general principles and techniques of collection work; legal requirements for collection of delinquent accounts; best practices and procedures
- Strong quantitative skills
- Experience working within a compliance regulated environment
- Strong customer service experience
- Excellent excel skills, knowledge of credit bureau datasets, NCR regulations and collections technologies
- Previous essential experience at a financial institution or large credit retailer

**Key Responsibilities**
- To formulate the collections and credit strategies, translate into key objectives and ensure successful implementation across the 2 departments.
- Set up and implement best practice processes and frameworks regarding credit and collections policies and activities
- Partnering with key internal stakeholders to ensure optimal delivery from the 2 departments
- Ensure overall legislative policy and compliance
- To ensure effective resource management, cost control and budget management
- Be responsible for the management and development of the collections team ensuring a happy and successful working environment
- Take ownership for the collection efforts of the debtors’ portfolio to reduce the number of overdue accounts and to minimise defaults
- Ensure key performance of SLAs are maintained across the collections team
- Leverage your expertise and experience when managing this book to improve collections rates
- Maintain the integrity of the data and leverage technology for best purpose collections
- Develop and maintain operational dashboards
- Develop and maintain effective incentive strategies for Collections Team

**Measurement criterion**
- Implementation and operational efficiency of collections process, as measured through collection rates and performance of the debtors’ book
- Improved debtors’ portfolio health through collections targets (% arrears, defaults and engagement effectiveness)
- A happy, healthy and high-performing collections team measured against development goals, wellness and happiness indicators

**Skills required**
- People management and day to day motivation and effective leadership
- Team player with the ability to establish positive working relationships across various functions.
- Driven, energetic and ambitious and not afraid to get your hands dirty. You have strong attention to detail, and the ability to switch between the big picture and day to day operations
- Target focused with strong control over SLA and metrics management
- Biased to action; create ideas, think outside the box, be a problem solver and solution finder, be proactive, use initiative to develop and improve existing processes
- Able to diagnose issues, find the necessary data, analyse the alternatives, and engage in a methodical problem-solving process
- Aligns and prioritises actions and resources in advance to achieve the best possible outcomes
- Resilient, gets things done, adaptable to change, huge capacity for hard work in a fast-paced environment