Credit Risk Director - Digital Bank

About the role

A recruitment agency is looking for a Credit Risk Director for a partner, a leading digital bank being built from the ground up. The bank lends in seconds, mostly through models rather than manual review, so the director designs and owns the entire credit risk architecture, sets the risk appetite and guardrails, and works closely with the CRO and CBE regulatory expectations.

Key responsibilities

• Own the credit risk strategy, policy suite, risk appetite framework and governance model across retail and MSME lending, aligned with the CRO's strategy and CBE regulations
• Define, validate and govern underwriting policy, credit scoring models and AI/ML decisioning engines for real-time, straight-through lending
• Set up model governance and validation lifecycles, including development standards, independent validation, monitoring, challenger frameworks and explainability
• Run the Early Warning Indicator (EWI) framework, escalate material risks to the CRO, and govern IFRS 9 ECL staging, provisioning and Basel capital adequacy and stress testing
• Set the digital-first collections and recoveries strategy, including segmentation and champion/challenger paths, and oversee fraud detection, prevention and decisioning controls
• Represent Credit Risk in the Board Risk Committee, Risk and Compliance Committee and product approval committees, and manage the policy exception framework
• Build and lead a credit risk team and work with Product, Data Science, Technology, Finance and Business

Required profile

• 12+ years in credit risk within banking or financial services, across acquisition, underwriting, portfolio management, collections and recoveries
• Prior experience as Head of Credit Risk or equivalent, owning policy, appetite and governance
• Direct CBE regulatory experience, including retail lending and provisioning regulations
• Bachelor's degree in a quantitative, finance, economics or business discipline
• Excellent communication with board-level stakeholders and executives

Required skills

• IFRS 9 (ECL and staging) and Basel credit risk capital framework
• Scorecard development and AI/ML model governance, validation, monitoring and explainability
• Portfolio analytics: vintage analysis, roll and flow rates, loss forecasting, EWI design
• Collections, recoveries and fraud risk strategy in a digital, automated context
• Preferred: digital bank or fintech background, hands-on AI/ML decisioning, master's degree, FRM/CFA/PRM or similar, and experience building a credit risk function from scratch