Principal Consultant - Agricultural Banking & Lending Products

About the role

SkyQuest Technology Consulting is delivering a 24-month technical assistance programme to strengthen a national agricultural development finance institution in Nigeria, improving access to finance for agricultural enterprises and smallholder farmers, especially women and underserved producers. The Principal Consultant leads the agricultural finance, credit and risk workstream, assessing lending capabilities, designing financing products and strengthening credit and portfolio-risk frameworks. The role is based in India with extended travel to Nigeria.

Key responsibilities

• Assess existing credit policies, loan portfolios and institutional capabilities in agricultural lending and risk management.
• Engage with credit, risk and branch teams and value-chain stakeholders to identify financing opportunities and constraints.
• Design agricultural finance products with repayment structures aligned to crop cycles and value-chain needs.
• Develop solutions for input suppliers, seed companies, growers, aggregators and off-takers, including warehouse-receipt finance, off-take-backed lending, alternative collateral and guarantees.
• Strengthen credit appraisal, risk-rating systems, provisioning and portfolio monitoring.
• Integrate climate-risk considerations and digital credit-scoring into lending.
• Pilot and refine products across selected value chains and branches, then embed validated frameworks in policies and SOPs, train teams and support handover.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Agricultural Economics, Banking or a related field; a Master's or professional banking qualification is an advantage.
• 15+ years of experience in agricultural lending, credit risk or value-chain finance within a bank or DFI.
• Hands-on experience in product design, warehouse-receipt financing, off-take structures and guarantees.
• Demonstrated ability to design, pilot and scale financing products for agricultural enterprises and small-scale producers.
• Desirable: knowledge of Nigerian or Sub-Saharan African value chains, experience on development-partner-funded programmes, and working knowledge of Hausa, Yoruba or Igbo.