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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Credit Risk Manager

💰 $ - $

Risk ManagementFinanceBankingCredit

🎯 Role Definition

The Credit Risk Manager is responsible for managing and mitigating credit risk across lending portfolios by establishing credit policy, performing quantitative credit analysis and modeling (PD/LGD/EAD), overseeing underwriting standards, conducting portfolio monitoring and stress testing, and ensuring regulatory compliance (Basel, IFRS9/CECL). This role leads cross-functional teams to optimize risk-adjusted returns, implements early-warning and delinquency management frameworks, and partners with business, finance and compliance to deliver actionable risk insights and capital-efficient credit strategies.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Credit Analyst with experience in commercial, corporate, or consumer lending
  • Credit Risk Analyst with expertise in modeling, monitoring, or provisioning
  • Relationship Manager / Credit Underwriter transitioning from front-line credit origination

Advancement To:

  • Head of Credit Risk / Director of Credit Risk
  • Chief Risk Officer (CRO) or Group Head of Risk
  • Head of Credit Portfolio Management or Chief Credit Officer

Lateral Moves:

  • Credit Portfolio Manager / Credit Strategist
  • Regulatory Compliance Lead (credit/regulatory reporting)
  • Credit Analytics or Risk Modeling Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Own end-to-end credit risk management for assigned portfolios (retail, SME, corporate, or specialty finance), including underwriting standards, approval limits, risk grading, and lifecycle monitoring to ensure sound credit decisions and minimize losses.
  • Develop, review and enforce credit policies, concentration limits, collateral and covenants standards, ensuring alignment with appetite statements, regulatory guidance (Basel III/IV) and internal capital allocation frameworks.
  • Lead credit risk assessment and credit approval committees: prepare decision packs, present structured credit recommendations, highlight key risks and mitigants, and document rationale for approvals and exceptions.
  • Design, build and validate quantitative credit risk models (Probability of Default — PD, Loss Given Default — LGD, Exposure at Default — EAD, Expected Credit Loss — ECL) using statistical tools (Python/R/SAS) and ensure model governance and documentation for model risk frameworks.
  • Manage IFRS 9 / CECL provisioning processes: drive model inputs, staging, scenario selection, macro-economic overlays, life-of-loan ECL calculations and governance of expected credit loss provisioning.
  • Perform portfolio-level monitoring and reporting: runoff analysis, vintage analysis, migration matrices, delinquency and default trend analysis, and recommend remediation actions to maintain portfolio quality.
  • Conduct stress testing and scenario analysis to quantify the impact of macroeconomic shocks on capital, provisions and profitability; prepare results for senior management and regulatory submissions.
  • Implement and maintain credit scoring and decisioning systems, automated underwriting rules, and early-warning indicators to accelerate safe origination while preserving credit quality.
  • Partner with product, sales and operations teams to embed credit risk controls into the product lifecycle, optimize pricing and limit appetite for new products/segments.
  • Lead counterparty credit assessments for corporates and financial institutions, including financial statement analysis, industry/sector risk assessment, covenant monitoring and limit setting.
  • Oversee portfolio optimization and risk-adjusted return analysis: recommend re-underwriting, restructuring, write-offs, collections strategies and portfolio rebalancing to improve profitability and risk metrics.
  • Drive delinquency and collections strategy: set segmentation strategies, treatment flows, recovery targets, and liaise with legal/collections vendors for workout and restructuring plans.
  • Manage regulatory reporting and interactions with supervisors on credit risk issues, including responses to inspections, stress testing exercises, and regulatory capital calculations.
  • Establish and maintain robust credit risk metrics (NPL ratio, coverage ratio, migration metrics, vintage performance) and deliver timely dashboards and narrative insights to executive stakeholders.
  • Lead credit risk limit setting and usage monitoring: review facility utilization, covenant breaches, limit exceptions, credit renewals and ensure limits are within delegated authority.
  • Supervise, mentor and develop a team of credit analysts, underwriters and risk specialists; set performance objectives, provide coaching, and ensure continuous professional development.
  • Conduct independent credit reviews and portfolio audits to ensure adherence to policy, identify control gaps, and implement remediation plans in partnership with internal audit and compliance.
  • Evaluate new business initiatives, partnerships and lending channels (e.g., marketplace lending, fintech integrations) for credit risk implications and design control frameworks for safe scale-up.
  • Coordinate stress-case scenario design and portfolio resilience programs tied to liquidity, capital planning, and contingency funding plans from a credit exposure perspective.
  • Implement credit risk data governance and quality controls: define required data elements, reconcile credit datasets, and work with analytics/IT to ensure accuracy for modeling and reporting.
  • Lead root-cause analysis of credit losses and fraud losses; recommend underwriting, product or process changes to prevent recurrence and strengthen the credit culture.
  • Negotiate large credit facilities, security documentation and covenants with legal and relationship teams to ensure enforceability and preserve recovery options.
  • Oversee vendor and third-party risk related to credit decisioning tools, credit bureaus, collections agencies and model providers — ensure SLAs, privacy and data security compliance.
  • Prepare clear, actionable credit committee materials and executive-level briefings that summarize portfolio trends, risk migration, capital impact and recommended strategic actions.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Support credit transformation initiatives, system implementations (loan origination, credit risk platforms) and change management activities.
  • Assist in procurement and evaluation of credit risk tools, analytics vendors, credit bureaus and market data subscriptions.
  • Contribute to cross-functional projects such as pricing optimization, product redesign, or digital lending transformation with credit risk lens.
  • Provide technical guidance on credit model documentation, model validation packages, and implementation plans for model recalibration or redeployment.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Credit risk assessment and underwriting expertise across retail, SME and corporate lending; mastery of financial statement analysis, cashflow analysis and covenant structuring.
  • Experience building, validating and governing PD/LGD/EAD models and scorecards; proficiency with model development lifecycle and model risk management.
  • Strong working knowledge of IFRS 9 and/or CECL accounting frameworks, provisioning methodologies, staging criteria and macroeconomic scenario translation to ECL.
  • Proficiency in statistical and data tools: Python, R, SAS, SQL for data extraction, modeling and analysis; experience with ML techniques for credit scoring is a plus.
  • Advanced Excel skills including pivot tables, advanced formulas, VBA for sensitivity analysis and portfolio reporting.
  • Familiarity with regulatory frameworks (Basel III/IV), capital adequacy, stress testing methodologies and regulatory reporting related to credit risk.
  • Experience with credit decisioning engines, loan origination systems (LOS), credit bureaus, and credit risk platforms (e.g., Moody’s, S&P, Fitch, FICO, Experian integrations).
  • Hands-on experience with portfolio analytics and reporting tools (BI tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker) to create dashboards and visualizations for stakeholders.
  • Knowledge of collections and recovery strategies, workout structuring and legal processes for enforcement and collateral realization.
  • Understanding of data governance, data quality, and ETL principles to ensure accurate inputs for credit models and reports.
  • Ability to design and execute stress tests, sensitivity analyses and scenario planning at portfolio and facility levels.

Soft Skills

  • Strong leadership and people management skills: hire, mentor, coach and develop high-performing credit risk teams.
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills: translate complex quantitative analysis into concise narratives for senior management, credit committees and regulators.
  • Strategic thinking and commercial acumen: balance risk mitigation with business growth and pricing optimization.
  • Problem solving and critical thinking: identify root causes of portfolio deterioration and craft pragmatic remediation plans.
  • Stakeholder management and influence: work cross-functionally with product, sales, legal, operations and IT to drive risk-aware decisions.
  • Attention to detail and high standards for documentation, compliance and control.
  • Ability to operate under pressure and manage competing priorities in a dynamic lending environment.
  • Negotiation skills and sound judgment in structuring facilities and remediation arrangements.
  • Project management skills to deliver transformation programs, model implementations and regulatory initiatives.
  • Ethical mindset with strong focus on regulatory compliance, fair lending and customer treatment.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Economics, Accounting, Business, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering or related quantitative field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree (MBA, MSc Finance, MSc Economics, or MSc in Data Science/Statistics) or professional certifications.
  • Professional certifications such as CFA, FRM, PRM, or advanced credit-specific certifications are highly desirable.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Finance
  • Economics
  • Accounting
  • Statistics / Applied Mathematics
  • Data Science / Computer Science
  • Business Administration

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–12 years in credit risk, underwriting, credit analytics or related roles; depending on seniority.

Preferred:

  • 7+ years of progressive experience in credit risk management, credit policy development, portfolio oversight and model governance.
  • Demonstrated experience managing teams and owning credit risk outcomes for assigned portfolios (retail, SME, corporate or specialty finance).
  • Track record interacting with regulators and delivering IFRS9/CECL provisioning, stress testing and regulatory credit reporting.
  • Experience with credit transformation programs, LOS implementations or risk analytics platform rollouts preferred.
  • Proven ability to apply quantitative methods to real-world credit portfolios and present actionable recommendations to senior leadership.
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