Head of Credit - SME & Merchant Business Credit

About the role

CredPal is a financial technology company offering credit cards and investment solutions. It is looking for a commercially aggressive, hands-on Head of Credit to own end-to-end business credit disbursement across its SME and merchant portfolio. The role drives merchant acquisition, activates new borrowers daily, builds high-velocity credit pipelines and delivers N1 billion+ in monthly disbursements, covering working capital loans, merchant financing, invoice financing, credit lines and embedded credit.

Key responsibilities

• Own monthly disbursement targets and daily performance, and convert leads to approval, disbursement and repeat drawdown
• Develop and scale acquisition channels such as direct sales, merchant partnerships, platforms, aggregators and embedded credit, and personally activate high-value merchants and partners
• Build lead generation strategies and optimize onboarding, approval and drawdown conversion
• Identify merchant clusters and trade groups, and drive activation, utilization and repeat borrowing
• Screen borrowers carefully, monitor repayment and delinquency, and partner on prevention and recovery
• Maintain dashboards on disbursement, utilization, repayment and risk, and use them to guide field actions and channel optimization
• Stay informed on SME lending trends, competitors and pricing, and coordinate with credit risk, operations, marketing, partnerships and product teams
• Deliver executive performance reports and forecast monthly disbursement, pipeline velocity and collections

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business or a related field; MBA or professional certification is an advantage
• 5 to 8 years in SME lending, business credit, merchant financing or commercial banking, with at least 3 years in a leadership role
• Proven track record of meeting or exceeding monthly targets (N1 billion+ preferred)
• Strong merchant and SME networks and hands-on experience in working capital loans, invoice financing and embedded credit
• Experience in a fintech, microfinance or high-growth lending environment is strongly preferred

Required skills

• Solid understanding of credit risk assessment, portfolio management, collections and delinquency control
• Analytical skills with dashboards and KPIs
• Stakeholder management across Risk, Product, Operations, Partnerships and Marketing

What we offer

• Professional development opportunities
• A collaborative, inclusive work culture
• Work with cutting-edge products and technologies
• A supportive management team