Manager: Collections Strategy

SUMMARY:
Are you a data-driven collections professional with strong strategic and analytical capability? This senior role offers the opportunity to shape and optimise the collections strategy within a large, complex financial services environment, where performance, profitability, and data-led decision-making are critical.

POSITION INFO:
This opportunity is with a well-established financial services organisation operating at scale within a regulated, high-volume credit environment. The business places strong emphasis on analytics-driven strategies, continuous optimisation, and effective stakeholder collaboration to improve collections performance and portfolio health.

In this role, you will take ownership of collections strategy across the full collections lifecycle, driving performance through advanced analytics, modelling, and strategic campaign planning. You will work closely with operations, BI teams, and senior stakeholders to improve key portfolio metrics and embed data-driven approaches into operational execution.

You’ll have the opportunity to influence enterprise-wide collections strategy, work with sophisticated data sets and models, and directly impact profitability, risk outcomes, and portfolio performance.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the strategic development and optimisation of the collections strategy across the full collections lifecycle
• Design, implement, document, and monitor collections models and strategies
• Analyse portfolio-level data to identify risks, trends, and root causes, and propose data-driven solutions
• Develop, forecast, and track collections targets and scorecards, ensuring performance against KPIs
• Collaborate with BI teams to ensure that dashboards and reporting are relevant, accurate, and fit for purpose
• Recommend and implement champion/challenger strategies to continuously improve portfolio performance
• Support operations by integrating analytics and models into day-to-day collections processes
• Develop strategic campaign plans to optimise resource utilisation and collections effectiveness
• Identify and recommend improvements to systems, processes, and policies
• Communicate complex analytical insights to non-technical stakeholders

• Education:
  • Honours Degree or equivalent in a quantitative discipline (e.g. BCom with Mathematics, Statistics, Finance, Economics with Econometrics, Actuarial Science, Engineering, or similar)
• Experience:
  • Minimum of 5 years’ experience in a collections strategy, credit risk, or analytics-focused role
  • Proven experience developing and optimising collections strategies and models
  • Strong exposure to portfolio analytics, forecasting, and performance optimisation
  • Experience within financial services or banking environments (advantageous)
• Skills:
  • Strong analytical and modelling capability
  • Advanced proficiency in SQL and Excel
  • Experience with R, Python, and cloud-based data environments (e.g. AWS)
  • Strong reporting, automation, and data visualisation skills
  • Ability to translate complex analytical concepts into actionable business insights
• Non-negotiables:
  • Strong quantitative and analytical background
  • Proven strategic thinking and stakeholder engagement capability
  • Ability to drive performance improvements across multiple portfolio metrics