Credit Risk Director - Personal Loans

The Credit Risk Director for Personal Loans leads a team responsible for end-to-end credit risk management across the personal (unsecured installment) loan lifecycle, balancing risk, customer experience, and profitable growth. This role owns strategic direction, prioritization, and execution across acquisition and underwriting strategy, credit policy, risk-based pricing and loan structuring, portfolio management, and loss mitigation. The leader will elevate the team’s approach to align with an advanced credit risk organization by introducing stronger segmentation, scorecard and model usage, test-and-learn discipline, decision science, monitoring, and implementation rigor. This position partners closely with Product, Finance, Operations, Fraud, Analytics, Technology, Compliance, and Governance to deliver strategies that are analytically sound, operationally executable, and consistent with risk appetite and portfolio objectives.

 Primary responsibilities include

• Lead the vision, design, and execution of personal loan credit risk strategies across acquisition and underwriting, credit policy, risk-based pricing and loan structuring, loan amount assignment, portfolio management, and loss mitigation to optimize profitability while managing credit losses within risk appetite.

• Manage, coach, and develop a team of credit risk professionals, raising the team’s capabilities in underwriting strategy design, segmentation, test-and-learn frameworks, loss forecasting, performance monitoring, and data-driven storytelling.

• Evolve existing credit risk methods toward a more advanced model by embedding sophisticated segmentation, custom and bureau scoring, challenger strategies, champion/challenger testing, reject inference, forecasting, and ongoing strategy calibration.

• Translate portfolio objectives into actionable credit policy and decision rules that improve customer-level treatment across approval, loan amount, pricing/APR, term, and ongoing account and portfolio management decisions.

• Partner with Analytics and Decision Science teams to identify opportunities for advanced models, alternative data, automated decisioning, and optimization techniques that improve underwriting precision and business outcomes.

• Oversee strategy implementation from concept through deployment, including business case development, requirements definition, controls, validation, UAT, and post-implementation review to ensure strategies are delivered accurately and perform as intended.

• Establish robust portfolio monitoring and governance routines, including vintage/cohort analysis, KPI and delinquency tracking, early warning indicators, exception management, and clear escalation paths for emerging risks or underperforming strategies.

• Provide strategic thought leadership to senior stakeholders by synthesizing portfolio trends, recommending actions, and clearly articulating tradeoffs across risk, growth, customer experience, and operational feasibility.

• Ensure strategies comply with internal policy, regulatory expectations (e.g., ECOA/Reg B, FCRA), and governance standards through strong partnership with Compliance, Legal, Model Risk, and Risk Governance teams.

• Monitor macroeconomic, regulatory, consumer, and competitive developments and translate those trends into proactive recommendations for personal loan credit strategy adjustments.

Qualifications

• Required Qualifications

  • 7+ years of progressive experience in consumer lending or personal/installment loan credit risk, including deep experience in underwriting and portfolio management strategies.

  • Strong credit risk analytics and strategy development background, including segmentation, scorecard usage, test design, loss forecasting, performance monitoring, and interpretation of credit and profitability dynamics.

  • Experience translating analytical insights into executable strategies and partnering with technology and operations teams to implement decision rules and policy changes at scale.

  • Working knowledge of risk governance, controls, regulatory expectations, and policy frameworks applicable to consumer installment/personal loan portfolios.

  • Strong executive communication skills with the ability to present complex analyses, recommendations, and tradeoffs clearly to senior leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.

  • Proficiency with analytical and reporting tools such as SQL, SAS, Python, Excel, Power BI, or similar tools used in large-scale portfolio strategy environments.

• Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience leading strategy modernization efforts that introduced more advanced segmentation, optimization techniques, machine learning, or automated decisioning into underwriting and portfolio management strategies.

  • Broad knowledge of personal loan economics, including loss performance, prepayment behavior, customer profitability, risk-based pricing, and balance and loss dynamics.

  • Experience working in highly matrixed organizations and influencing senior partners across Product, Finance, Operations, Fraud, Compliance, and Technology.

  • Demonstrated success building strong governance and monitoring routines that improve strategy performance, transparency, and control execution.

     

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, Business, Data Science, or a related quantitative discipline; equivalent combination of education and relevant experience may be considered.

• Advanced degree such as an MBA, Master’s in Analytics, Statistics, Economics, or a related field is preferred.

   

Hours & Work Schedule

• Hours per Week: 40
• Work Schedule: M-F

Equal Employment Opportunity

Citizens, its parent, subsidiaries, and related companies (Citizens) provide equal employment and advancement opportunities to all colleagues and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, citizenship, physical or mental disability, perceived disability or history or record of a disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, genetic information, genetic characteristic, marital or domestic partner status, victim of domestic violence, family status/parenthood, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, pregnancy/childbirth/lactation, colleague’s or a dependent’s reproductive health decision making, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by federal, state and/or local laws. At Citizens, we are committed to fostering an inclusive culture that enables all colleagues to bring their best selves to work every day and everyone is expected to be treated with respect and professionalism. Employment decisions are based solely on merit, qualifications, performance and capability.

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