Senior Lending Specialist

Here at Monzo we’re at a tipping point:

• We’re now the fastest growing bank in the UK (in # of new users, as well as % terms) - with 1.7m customers and adding over 100k new users each month.
• We’re rated by Which as the best bank in the UK for customer satisfactionand by Money Saving Expert as the best UK bank for customer service.
• In the last few months we’ve reached break-even unit economics (every additional user adds additional profitability, albeit we still have ~£30m of fixed costs we have to cover)
• We just finished raising an additional £105m of capital (at a £1Bn pre-money valuation).

At Monzo we believe there’s a better way to do banking - we care deeply about our customers, are innovative and we execute quickly.

We’re looking to revolutionise the way consumers manage their finances by putting them in control and promoting their financial wellbeing. As part of that effort we are developing lending products that genuinely feel good and are looking for highly intelligent and creative individuals to help us on our journey.

The Role

At Monzo we split teams into highly autonomous multi-functional ‘squads’ - each empowered and equipped to tackle a specific problem for our users. As a Lending Specialist you will work within one of our lending product squads (focused on a product like ‘overdrafts’ or ‘loans’ for example), guiding that squad on the expected commercial performance of their product. You will be responsible for guiding them on fundamental issues such as:

• Where to set credit score cut-offs
• How to set and manage credit limits
• How to set pricing
• How profitability will change over time based on how we approach the above

You will be responsible for ensuring the squad collectively develops a deep commercial understanding and are asking the right questions to deliver a highly performing lending product. You will work with finance to develop and deliver a commercial plan for the product and help track performance against that plan. Initially you would be an individual contributor but your role may evolve to include an element of people management over time.  

You’ll spend your time working on:

• Developing a deep understanding of how our users are interacting with our products optimising the value created for both users and the company.
• Ensuring that the product performs as expected (within the planned level of credit risk whilst delivering the anticipated returns),
• Applying your expertise in quantitative analysis, data mining, and the presentation of data to see beyond the numbers and understand how our users interact with our products and how those insights can inform our product strategy
• Assessing how the lending portfolio of particular products will perform over time
• Ensuring we operate in a well governed, compliant and customer-centric way
• Preparing regular updates on lending to our executive committee and Board.
• Monitoring and communicating the level of credit risk we’re taking on your product

The Candidate

Although an individual contributor role, this role will be pivotal to the set up of our lending products and their success so may appeal to people currently working in Manager, Senior Manager or ‘Head-of’ roles within lending (such as Head of Credit Risk, Head of Portfolio Management, Head of Pricing etc..)

We’d love you to apply if you have a deep understanding of managing consumer credit portfolios. You should understand all aspects of the credit lifecycle from acquisition funnel optimization, decision science and underwriting through portfolio management, including collections and provisioning. You will have several years experience setting credit cut-offs, setting credit limit strategies and refining pricing on consumer lending portfolios and you should know how to build and use tools like NPV modelling to do that to optimise value.

You will have worked with finance teams to model and track the performance of lending portfolios over time. You’re likely to have a solid knowledge of credit reference agency products and data and should have experience of lending specific accounting rules (such as how to recognise revenue and credit losses).

You’d be a good fit for the role if you’re comfortable working in a highly collaborative environment where ideas can come from all team members as well as balancing ‘soft’ information (e.g. customer feedback/qualitative market research) with hard data (e.g. A/B test outcomes). The team operates in a highly agile manner, so it’s important that you’re able to identify and focus on what is necessary for the next milestone (rather than the perfect solution).

The application process consists of a short phone interview, followed by a practical written exercise with a follow up call, and a couple of on-site interviews at our office in London.  

We care deeply about inclusive working practices and diverse teams. If you’d prefer to work part-time or as a job-share, we’ll facilitate this wherever we can – whether to help you meet other commitments or to help you strike a great work-life balance. We’re keen to ensure we’re designing a bank that works for everyone, so we particularly encourage applications from different underrepresented demographics.

Competitive salary plus stock options and other benefits.