Role Overview

As a leader within the merchant lending team at PhonePe, the incumbent will be involved in driving both business growth and supply through new partnerships. This role requires a blend of strategic vision, commercial acumen, and deep operational rigour to solve complex problem statements in the fintech lending space

Core Functional Charters

• Partnership Lifecycle Ownership: End-to-end accountability for identifying, onboarding, and scaling/managing partnerships with Banks and NBFCs.
• Operational Excellence: Achieving a gold standard in strategic planning, execution, governance, and business reporting.

Key Responsibilities & Competencies

• Strategic Vision: Define functional vision and goals for short-term cycles in consultation with leadership, ensuring tight alignment with overall organizational objectives.
• New Lender onboarding: Drive onboarding of new lending partners in alignment with business objectives
• Managing existing lender partnerships - Drive excellence in management of existing lender partnerships across strategic, operational, commercial, governance, compliance and other related matters.
• Business Outcomes: Maintain and exceed business and numerical targets by developing industry-leading frameworks for data-driven decision-making and execution.
• Product & Roadmap Alignment: Undertake active discussions with Product Leaders to understand the long-term roadmap and plan execution strategies in sync with product releases.
• Systems & Information Architecture: Enable the team by enhancing information architecture and support systems to streamline data flow and operational efficiency.
• Governance & Risk: Set up a robust governance structure to proactively identify and mitigate issues within the design or execution of business processes.
• Regulatory Readiness: Proactively study and prepare the category for regulatory changes and significant industry developments to ensure business continuity and compliance.
• Change Management: Drive complex, large-scale changes to systems and processes for sustained long-term impact on the business.
• Stakeholder Management: Serve as the 'Voice of the Function' during periodic update discussions and strategic reviews across the organization.
• Cross-Functional Problem Solving: Act as a bridge between departments to solve complex cross-functional challenges that impede category growth.
• People & Org Development: Take an active role in defining the right organizational structure and work with leadership to coach and develop team members for specialized roles.
• Continuously keeping a pulse of the industry and moving trends and capitalize on opportunities for business growth

Ideal Candidate for this role

• MBA or equivalent from a Tier-1 institute with 7+ years of experience in Category Management, Fintech, or Lending.
• Proven track record of managing high-volume business outcomes in a fast-paced environment.
• Thrives at building relationships, influencing cross-functional teams and leadership teams on strategic execution of key projects.
• Exceptional influencing and communication skills to manage CXO-level relationships at large financial institutions.
• "First Principles" thinker with the ability to build complex decision-making frameworks

Role Overview

This is a critical leadership role responsible for steering the strategic direction and operational success of the lending business. You will be the primary driver of growth, ensuring that the merchant lending portfolio achieves scale while maintaining industry-leading standards in governance, process efficiency, and product innovation.

Core Functional Charters

• Growth Ownership: Complete end-to-end accountability for the growth of Merchant Lending volumes within the PhonePe ecosystem.
• Operational Excellence: Achieving a gold standard in strategic planning, execution, governance, and business reporting.

Key Responsibilities & Competencies

• Strategic Vision: Define functional vision and goals for short-term cycles in consultation with leadership, ensuring tight alignment with overall organizational objectives.
• Business Outcomes: Maintain and exceed business and numerical targets by developing industry-leading frameworks for data-driven decision-making and execution.
• Growth & Innovation: Dissect industry movements to drive business growth; this includes optimizing current business lines and proactively adding new credit products to the portfolio.
• Product & Roadmap Alignment: Undertake active discussions with Product Leaders to understand the long-term roadmap and plan execution strategies in sync with product releases.
• Systems & Information Architecture: Enable the team by enhancing information architecture and support systems to streamline data flow and operational efficiency.
• Governance & Risk: Set up a robust governance structure to proactively identify and mitigate issues within the design or execution of business processes.
• Regulatory Readiness: Proactively study and prepare the category for regulatory changes and significant industry developments to ensure business continuity and compliance.
• Change Management: Drive complex, large-scale changes to systems and processes for sustained long-term impact on the business.
• Stakeholder Management: Serve as the 'Voice of the Function' during periodic update discussions and strategic reviews across the organization.
• Cross-Functional Problem Solving: Act as a bridge between departments to solve complex cross-functional challenges that impede category growth.
• People & Org Development: Take an active role in defining the right organizational structure and work with leadership to coach and develop team members for specialized roles.

Required Qualifications

• MBA or equivalent from a Tier-1 institute with 5+ years of experience in Category Management, Fintech, or Lending.
• Proven track record of managing high-volume business outcomes in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong analytical mindset with the ability to build decision-making frameworks from scratch.
• Excellent communication skills to act as the functional representative to senior leadership.

Job Summary:

The Associate Manager, Collections Strategy and Planning will be responsible for managing the day-to-day activities of the collection strategy team for merchant and consumer lending. This role requires a deep understanding of debt collection strategies across various channels (tele-calling, field, and digital), a strong grasp of collection and recovery metrics (including NPA), and the ability to analyze data to identify trends, perform root cause analysis (RCA), and drive performance improvements. The ideal candidate will be a data-driven problem solver with excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities:

• Strategy Execution & Monitoring: Implement and monitor collection strategies across different loan products (merchant and consumer), ensuring alignment with overall business objectives. This includes optimizing strategies for different delinquency buckets.
• Channel Management: Oversee the performance of various collection channels (telecalling, field agents, legal, and digital channels like SMS, email, WhatsApp, in-app notifications). Analyze channel effectiveness and recommend improvements.
• Data Analysis & Reporting: Analyze collection performance data, identify key trends, and provide regular reports on key metrics such as roll rates, recovery rates, NPA, and collection efficiency. Develop dashboards and visualizations to track performance.
• Root Cause Analysis (RCA): Conduct thorough root cause analysis for missed performance targets, identify contributing factors, and recommend corrective actions. Collaborate with other teams to implement solutions.
• Strategy Optimization: Continuously evaluate and refine collection strategies based on data analysis, market trends, and regulatory changes. Propose and implement new strategies to improve recovery rates and reduce losses.
• Vendor Performance Management: Monitor their performance against agreed-upon KPIs, conduct regular reviews, and ensure compliance with company policies and regulations.
• Collaboration: Work closely with other teams, including product, technology, risk, and operations, to ensure seamless execution of collection strategies.
• Compliance: Ensure all collection activities comply with regulatory guidelines and company policies. Stay updated on changes in regulations related to debt collection.
• Documentation: Maintain detailed documentation of collection strategies, processes, and performance metrics.

Required Skills and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree
• Minimum of 6-8 years of experience in collections strategy or a related analytical role, preferably in Banking/NBFC.
• Strong understanding of debt collection strategies and best practices, including telecalling, field collections, legal processes, and digital collection channels.
• In-depth knowledge of collection and recovery metrics, including NPA, roll rates, recovery rates, and collection efficiency.
• Proficiency in data analysis tools and techniques
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills. Ability to identify trends, conduct RCA, and develop data-driven solutions.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills. Ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Knowledge of regulatory guidelines and compliance requirements related to debt collection.
• Experience with merchant lending and consumer lending is a plus.

About the Role

As a core member of the Lending Operations team, the incumbent will be involved in setting up strong operational processes and driving automation right from scratch. This role requires strong stakeholder management skills, a knack for granular details, and the ability to understand complex systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Process Setup & Optimization: Set up processes to track, manage, and optimize the end-to-end loan lifecycle, including origination, disbursement, repayments, and collections.
• Efficiency Improvement: Identify system-level opportunities to improve the repayment and collections processes to increase overall efficiency
• Cross-Functional Strategy: Collaborate with cross-functional teams to implement strategies focused on improving conversion rates and user experience.
• Compliance & Control: Review, interpret, and implement regulatory guidelines applicable to the Lending Business. Develop an end-to-end Reconciliation Control process for Lending Operations.
• Customer Support & SOPs: Develop and implement feedback mechanisms to continuously improve customer support processes. Set up Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for customer-faced issues in coordination with the Customer Support team.
• Reporting & Streamlining: Responsible for the management of business reporting and any ad-hoc reporting required. Identify issues and lead process streamlining as required.

Required Qualifications

• Education: Preferably B.Tech from a Tier-1 institution OR MBA from a Tier-1/Tier-2 institution
• Experience: 2-3 years of Operations background.
• Skills: Strong logical and problem-solving skills.
• Abilities: Proven ability to evaluate, streamline, and set up scalable processes for the business.

Preferred Skills

• Prior experience in the lending vertical operations is preferred.
• Ability to thrive at building relationships, influencing cross-functional teams, and collaborating with leadership on strategic execution of key projects.
• Agile, highly collaborative approach with impressive communication skills.