Credit Risk Compliance Specialist

Job Overview

• With EEA selling its products on credit to hundreds of thousands of individual customers every year, EEA’s Customer Finance function plays a key role in the success of the business.
• The Global Customer Finance function supports EEA’s operating entities on credit product design, workflow enhancement guidance, portfolio management tools and capacity building.
• Within the Credit Risk Management Team of Global Customer Finance, we work on the standards, systems, tools and workflows employed by EEA’s country operations to analyse, manage and direct EEA’s portfolio quality as guided by the relevant Company Policy and business objectives.
• The Credit Risk Compliance Specialist plays a key role in advancing EEA’s approach to credit risk management. The role supports the Global Customer Finance function, specifically the Credit Risk Management team, to map countries’ risk management practices in different areas of the credit risk management cycle, including fraud prevention and related mitigation. The Credit Risk Compliance Specialist compares the actual practices with the applicable policies (i.e. EEA Credit Risk Management Framework) and standards (i.e. Standard Operating Practices), highlights emerging gaps and drafts corrective plans, policies and/ or country guidelines in cooperation with global and local teams to tackle those gaps, develops a credit risk compliance management framework and related monitoring tools and routines. Moreover, the Credit Risk Compliance Specialist supports, and where appropriate takes the lead, in implementing actions directed at improving credit risk as agreed during the Country Credit Risk Committees.

Key Responsibilities

Credit Risk Mapping and Routines

• Credit Risk Mapping. Develop, together with the global and country Customer Finance teams, credit risk mapping tools and routines to identify country- or product-specific credit risk management priorities; ensure reference to EEA Credit Risk Management Framework and existing Standard Operating Practices.
• Compliance Assessment. Continuously conduct internal assessment of and timely reporting to Global Customer Finance and country management teams on any non-compliance issues.
• Compliance Reporting. Contribute to the Country Credit Risk Reports and Country Credit Risk Committee meetings by reporting on compliance subjects.

Credit Risk Non-Compliance Mitigation

• Non-Compliance Response. Develop, together with credit process stakeholders and management teams, countermeasures to prevent and/ or to respond to non-compliance instances.
• Non-Compliance Mitigation. Support the local teams to implement non-compliance mitigation actions (e.g. through drafting action plans, providing leadership and follow-up routines in action plan implementation, adjustment or strengthening of credit management routines, etc.).
• Compliance Monitoring Tools. Ensure that country stakeholders have access to credit risk compliance monitoring tools and that such information is processed to inform decision making and action plans.
• Mitigation Circle. Collaborate with stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and potential for innovation in EEA’s processes, standards, tools, etc.

Knowledge Sharing & Capacity Development Support

• Compliance Best Practice Standards. Train and communicate on credit risk policy standards, tools and compliance best practice standards to country teams across multiple departments and levels of the business. Document and share credit risk compliance insights and best practices
• Credit Risk Training Content. Support development and delivery of credit risk training content for MySol Academy; MySol Guide and other credit-related training initiatives.
• Compliance Monitoring Tools. Where appropriate, provide country teams and Global CF with insights and recommendations coming from analysis of reports and monitoring tools to give important context, inform decisions and action plans.

Stakeholder Management

• Point of Contact. Serve as a lead point of contact for countries’ Head of Customer Finance departments in matters related to credit risk management compliance.
• Strategy Contributor. Contribute to the overall strategy and priorities of EEA Customer Finance and country-specific strategies (in some cases, leading or guiding this process) related to Credit Risk compliance.

Fostering Credit Culture

• Credit Culture. Foster a strong credit culture and understanding of credit principles in the organization, particularly through training, facilitation and capacity development.
• Leading Leaders. Recognize, empower, mentor, challenge and encourage country leaders and managers in areas related to credit risk management and compliance. Apply a growth mindset and cultivate the same in credit leaders and managers in country.
• General Capacity Development. Directly support capacity development on credit risk management and compliance topics, e.g. through recruitment, onboarding and training.

Qualifications and Skills

Experience:

• 4+ years of professional experience in financial services, compliance, internal audit or a related field; work experience in Sub-Saharan Africa in the off-grid energy sector is a plus.
• 2+ years of domain experience in credit risk management, compliance management or other data-smart lending operations based on commercial principles; exposure to individual micro lending technology is a plus.
• Can-do attitude, with a knack for problem solving and tackling big challenges that require both team collaboration and individual perseverance.
• Strong analytical and presentation skills; ability to combine hard data and observations on operational realities and translate into actionable guidance.
• High level of professional curiosity and interest in how to make processes and systems work to their best, and an aptitude to investigate and crosscheck information before acting on it.
• Strong and confident communicator who is equally capable of asking for support and guidance as well as sharing feedback, information and knowledge with others.
• Detail-oriented with an ability to support your colleagues maintain high quality of their work.
• Empathy and stamina in collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders including customers, customer-facing teams, leaders and managers across the business and its cultural contexts.
• Familiarity with the characteristics of our customer base and the challenges faced by our customer-facing teams.

Qualifications:

• University degree required; degree in economics, agricultural economics, development economics, business, finance, microfinance or a related subject is desired.
• Certification in a relevant topic (e.g. project management; process mapping; Six Sigma, microfinance, data management; portfolio management) is a plus.