Portfolio Head: Retail, Wholesale, Fleet and Corporate Credit

Introduction

The Head of Credit is responsible for providing strategic and executive leadership across the organization’s end-to-end credit value chain. The role is accountable for developing and executing the credit strategy in support of sustainable business growth, profitability, and customer acquisition, while maintaining a robust risk appetite and high-quality lending portfolio. The Head of Credit will balance growth, risk, customer experience, and profitability, ensuring that credit decisions support the organization’s commercial objectives without compromising portfolio quality, regulatory compliance, or long-term value creation

Duties & Responsibilities

Measurable Key results Areas include, but is not limited to: -

Credit Strategy & Leadership

• Develop and lead the organisation's overall credit strategy aligned to the corporate strategy and risk appetite.

• Establish appropriate credit policies, frameworks, methodologies and decision-making principles.

• Translate market, economic and automotive industry trends into proactive credit strategies.

• Provide executive leadership on credit appetite, portfolio growth and risk-return optimisation.

• Ensure the credit function is commercially focused, agile and responsive to changing market conditions.

• Drive continuous improvement and innovation in credit processes, policies and decisioning

• Provide executive leadership and strategic direction across Retail, Wholesale and Fleet & Corporate Credit portfolios.

• Develop differentiated credit strategies, risk appetite settings and portfolio growth plans appropriate to each credit segment.

• Ensure alignment between customer, dealer, fleet and wholesale credit strategies while maintaining appropriate portfolio diversification and risk-adjusted returns.

• Balance commercial growth objectives across Retail, Wholesale and Fleet & Corporate portfolios in line with the organisation's strategic priorities

Credit Risk Management

• Maintain an appropriate balance between credit growth and portfolio quality.

• Establish and monitor credit risk appetite, limits, and early-warning indicators.

• Oversee credit risk identification, assessment, mitigation, and monitoring.

• Ensure effective management of concentration risk across manufacturers, dealers, customer segments, products, geographies, and asset classes.

• Lead the development and ongoing refinement of credit scoring, risk-based pricing, and credit decisioning models.

• Monitor emerging risks and ensure timely corrective action

• Ensure compliance with applicable legislation, regulations, and regulatory requirements.

• Maintain effective credit governance structures, policies, and delegated authorities.

• Chair or participate in relevant credit, risk, and governance committees.

• Ensure appropriate escalation of material credit risks and exceptions.

• Maintain strong relationships with Internal Audit, Risk, Compliance, and external assurance providers.

• Ensure the credit function operates within approved risk appetite and governance frameworks

• Establish and oversee credit risk frameworks covering Retail, Wholesale and Fleet & Corporate Credit portfolios.

• Monitor portfolio concentration, counterparty exposure, dealer risk, fleet operator risk, and manufacturer-related risk across all credit segments.

• Ensure appropriate risk assessment methodologies are applied to consumers, dealerships, fleet operators, and corporate customers.

• Oversee portfolio stress testing across Retail, Wholesale and Fleet & Corporate portfolios and implement mitigating actions where required.

Stakeholder Management

• Partner with Retail Sales, Fleet & Corporate Sales, Dealer Development and Wholesale business teams to support sustainable portfolio growth.

• Build strategic relationships with Chief Executive Officer, Leadership Committee , Board and board Risk Committee, Europe Africa Region Risk function, Sales functions , Corporate partners, and manufacturer stakeholders to support responsible lending growth.

• Provide credit leadership and insights to executive committees on Retail, Wholesale and Fleet & Corporate portfolio performance.

Leadership and People Management

• Build a high-performing, commercially orientated credit leadership team.

• Establish clear accountability, performance standards and succession plans.

• Develop critical credit, analytics and risk capabilities within the organisation.

• Foster a culture of disciplined risk-taking, accountability and continuous improvement.

• Promote collaboration between Credit, Sales, Risk, Finance, Operations and Technology.

• Build an environment where responsible challenge and independent credit judgement are encouraged.

• Lead transformation and change initiatives across the credit organisation.

Credit Decisioning and Origination

• Ensure efficient and consistent credit decisioning across all customer types and dealer channels.

• Optimize approval rates and turnaround times while maintaining appropriate risk standards.

• Develop differentiated credit strategies for customer segments and risk profiles.

• Ensure credit policies support competitive market positioning.

• Partner with Sales, Dealer Network, Marketing and Product teams to identify opportunities for responsible growth.

• Drive increased automation and digitalization of credit decisioning.

Portfolio Management

• Take executive accountability for the performance and quality of the lending portfolio.

• Monitor portfolio trends, arrears, defaults, recoveries, losses and vintage performance.

• Establish appropriate portfolio segmentation and performance management disciplines.

• Identify deterioration trends early and implement appropriate remedial strategies.

• Develop strategies to optimize portfolio profitability and risk-adjusted returns.

• Ensure appropriate stress testing and scenario analysis of the portfolio

Collection and Recoveries

• Provide strategic oversight of collections and recoveries, where within the executive portfolio.

• Develop strategies to maximize recoveries while protecting customer relationships and the organization’s reputation.

• Optimize collection strategies using data, segmentation, and predictive analytics.

• Monitor recovery performance, loss severity and cost-to-collect.

• Ensure appropriate management of repossessions, vehicle disposals, and associated recovery processes.

Data Analytics and Credit Technology

• Build a data-driven credit organisation.

• Leverage advanced analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence where appropriate to improve credit decisioning and portfolio management.

• Ensure effective use of internal and external data sources.

• Develop or monitor predictive indicators for customer behavior, delinquency and default.

• Drive automation of credit processes while maintaining appropriate governance and controls.

• Ensure data quality and integrity across the credit lifecycle.

Financial and Commercial Management

• Contribute to achieving sustainable revenue and profitability targets.

• Optimize risk-adjusted returns and cost of credit.

• Ensure appropriate risk-based pricing and commercial credit strategies.

• Provide input into product pricing, dealer incentives, and customer propositions.

• Evaluate the credit implications of new products, channels, partnerships, and markets.

• Balance market competitiveness with long-term portfolio economics.

Governance, Compliance and Regulatory Management

• Ensure compliance with applicable legislation, regulations and regulatory requirements.

• Maintain effective credit governance structures, policies and delegated authorities.

• Chair or participate in relevant credit, risk and governance committees.

• Ensure appropriate escalation of material credit risks and exceptions.

• Maintain strong relationships with Internal Audit, Risk, Compliance and external assurance providers.

• Ensure the credit function operates within approved