Senior Credit Risk Practitioner

About the role

This is an opportunity for an experienced Credit Risk professional to play a pivotal role in shaping the evolution of the function. As a Senior Credit Risk Practitioner, you will combine analytical depth, commercial judgement, governance discipline, and strategic thinking to influence decision quality across the credit lifecycle. You will partner closely with Product, Pricing, Distribution, Technology, Operations, Collections and L1 and L2 Risk teams to design, evolve and optimise credit strategies that improve customer outcomes and strengthen portfolio performance. You will lead complex credit problems end-to-end - from framing ambiguous issues and diagnosing portfolio performance through to shaping strategy direction, driving implementation, monitoring outcomes and refining decisions over time. The role requires hands-on ownership across the full credit lifecycle, balancing strategic thinking with practical execution and operational delivery. You will also help uplift capability across the broader team by coaching and supporting practitioners through collaboration, peer review, technical guidance and knowledge sharing, contributing to a strong culture of learning, accountability and continuous improvement. This is a role for someone who enjoys solving complex problems, connecting insights across the credit lifecycle, and driving meaningful portfolio and business outcomes through disciplined, hands-on credit risk practice. Key Role Responsibilities Include: - Credit Strategy Design, Evolution & Optimisation: Design, evolve and optimise credit strategies across originations, portfolio management and collections by shaping policy settings, score-based cut-offs, segmentation and decision logic that balances growth, customer outcomes, risk appetite, operational effectiveness and portfolio performance. - Portfolio Insight, Strategy Performance & Risk Stewardship: Build forward-looking portfolio insights by connecting views across the credit lifecycle, identifying emerging risks, diagnosing performance shifts and driving strategy responses that strengthen portfolio outcomes over time. - Governance, Decision Quality & Change Leadership: Strengthen governance practices and decision quality across the credit lifecycle through disciplined approaches to testing, implementation, validation, documentation, communication and post-implementation review while ensuring strategies operate effectively in production. - Data, Analytics & Continuous Improvement: Use data, analytical tools and emerging technologies to improve decisioning, portfolio understanding, profitability, operational effectiveness and management of non-financial risk and events. Drive continuous improvement in credit strategies, decisioning practices and ways of working. - Leadership & Capability Uplift: Act as a senior practitioner and trusted subject matter expert within the team by coaching and supporting practitioners and analysts through collaboration, peer review, technical guidance and knowledge sharing, helping lift the quality, consistency and maturity of credit risk thinking and delivery across the function. Experience and Capability Profile: Deep experience in retail credit risk, banking, financial services or similarly complex, analytically intensive and commercially driven environments involving strategy, portfolio optimisation, risk management or operational decisioning. Strong analytical capability with tools such as SAS, SQL, Python, Excel, Tableau or similar, including experience working with modern cloud-based data and analytics platforms such as Google BigQuery, Snowflake or equivalent technologies. Strong experience working with enterprise decisioning and workflow platforms such as Experian PowerCurve (Originations, Strategy Management, Customer Management or Collections), E1, FICO, Pega, Ab Initio, Provenir or similar platforms used to design, implement and optimise business rules, credit strategies and operational decisioning at scale. Experience translating complex data into clear insights, strategic recommendations and portfolio actions. Strong understanding of credit strategy design, portfolio dynamics, and financial risk drivers including provisions, losses, recoveries, return on equity and profit after cost of capital. Experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives across Product, Technology, Operations, Collections, Distribution and Risk teams. Well-developed judgement, structured thinking and the ability to balance commercial outcomes with prudent risk management