Credit Manager - Education Loans

Job Purpose:

Assess Education Loan applications independently and consistently, balancing customer eligibility, repayment capacity, academic and employability factors, collateral support, legal and technical acceptability, and portfolio quality.

Duties and Responsibilities:

- Review applicant and co-applicant identity, relationship, academics, admission, institution, course, country, test scores and requested funding.

- Assess income, banking, bureau, obligations, repayment capacity and policy eligibility.

- Evaluate cost of education, scholarships, margin or own contribution, living expenses and the proposed loan amount.

- Assess secured and unsecured structures, including property, gold or other approved collateral, through applicable reports and controls.

- Own or review Legal and Technical Assessment requirements for secured cases and ensure satisfactory reports are available before progressing the credit decision.

- Engage and coordinate with approved third-party valuers and lawyers to facilitate timely valuation, technical and legal reports; review report validity, observations, conditions and exceptions for credit consideration.

- Review verification outcomes, fraud indicators, deviations and mitigants, and raise evidence-based queries.

- Prepare or validate credit assessment notes, recommendations, sanction conditions and deviation matrices.

- Decide, recommend, refer or decline cases within the approved credit authority matrix and ensure complete decision audit trail.

- Monitor underwriting quality, approval, rejection and deviation trends, turnaround time, productivity and portfolio feedback.

- Coordinate with Sales, Risk, Operations, RCU, Collections, Legal, Technical, collateral teams and external service providers while preserving independent credit judgement.

- Provide market and portfolio feedback for policy refinement, process improvement and new product launches.

- Set the functional credit direction, operating rhythm and governance standards.

- Own resource priorities, senior stakeholder alignment and underwriting capability building.

- Sponsor policy, process, technology, vendor-governance and portfolio-quality interventions.

Key Decisions / Dimensions:

- Approve, recommend, refer or decline cases strictly within the approved credit authority matrix and risk policy.

- Assess the acceptability of legal, technical, valuation and collateral observations for credit decisioning within delegated authority.

- Escalate title, valuation, technical, fraud, policy, compliance and other material exceptions to the prescribed authority.

- Numeric sanction and deviation authorities are to be defined in the approved delegation matrix.

Key interactions:

Internal: Sales, Product, Risk, Operations, RCU/Fraud Control, Collections, Legal, Technical, Collateral, Compliance, Finance, Technology and COE.

External: Students, co-applicants, approved valuers, lawyers, legal and technical agencies, verification partners and other approved service providers.

Major Challenges:

- Balancing growth, customer experience, turnaround time and portfolio quality.

- Managing incomplete or inconsistent academic, financial, collateral, legal and technical information.

- Coordinating internal teams and third-party agencies while maintaining independent credit judgement.

- Identifying and resolving adverse legal, technical, valuation, fraud or policy observations within defined authority.

Required Qualifications and Experience:

Postgraduate or equivalent professional qualification in Finance, Management or a related discipline preferred. 7+ years of relevant credit and underwriting experience, including leadership of teams, portfolios, geographies, policy implementation and credit governance.

Critical skills and knowledge:

- Credit appraisal and financial analysis

- Bureau, banking and income assessment

- Academic and employability assessment

- Secured and unsecured lending

- Legal and Technical report interpretation

- Property valuation, collateral and title-risk awareness

- Third-party valuer, lawyer and vendor coordination

- Fraud-risk awareness and decision writing

- Excel, presentation and business MIS capability

- High standards of integrity, customer confidentiality and control discipline