Director, Credit Risk Strategy Returning Channel (Eluru)

Applied Data Finance; Eluru District; On-site; INR 17,208,000 - 24,857,000; Full time

Job summary

Applied Data Finance is seeking a senior credit strategist to own the end-to-end credit risk lifecycle for the Returning Customer channel personal loan business. You will lead underwriting, pricing, verification, and servicing strategies, leveraging ML/AI models and alternative data to drive profitable growth while keeping losses within risk appetite.

You will define the Returning channel credit strategy, govern policy and rule changes end-to-end, and lead a high‑performing team of credit

Qualifications

• Senior leader accountable for credit underwriting, pricing, verification, account management, line management, and servicing strategy for our Returning Customer channel personal loan business.
• You will own the end-to-end credit risk lifecycle for existing customers—from re-underwriting and offer generation through line assignment, pricing, in-life account management, and delinquency/servicing strategy—leveraging ML/AI models, alternative data, and advanced analytics to drive profitable growth while keeping credit and fraud losses within risk appetite.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the Returning channel credit strategy roadmap, govern policy and rule changes end-to-end, and serve as the senior credit strategy partner to Finance, Portfolio Management, Capital Markets, Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Operations, Marketing, and Fraud.
• Lead a high-performing team of credit strategists and data scientists across India, collaborating with colleagues and partners in the US.

Job description

Role Summary

Senior leader accountable for credit underwriting, pricing, verification, account management, line management, and servicing strategy for our Returning Customer channel personal loan business. You will own the end-to-end credit risk lifecycle for existing customersfrom re-underwriting and offer generation through line assignment, pricing, in-life account management, and delinquency/servicing strategyleveraging ML/AI models, alternative data, and advanced analytics to drive profitable growth while keeping credit and fraud losses within risk appetite.

You will define and evolve the Returning channel credit strategy roadmap, govern policy and rule changes end-to-end, and serve as the senior credit strategy partner to Finance, Portfolio Management, Capital Markets, Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, Operations, Marketing, and Fraud. The role is strategy- and analytics-led with hands-on technical fluency to guide the team credibly and requires leading and growing a high-performing team of credit strategists and data scientists across India, while collaborating with colleagues and partners in the US.

How You'll Make an Impact

• Returning Channel Credit Strategy Roadmap: Own and evolve the credit, pricing, and verification strategy for the Returning channelcovering re-underwriting eligibility, pre-approval and pre-qualification, offer generation, cross-sell/up-sell, and refinance/consolidation strategiesbalancing loss, approval, take-rate, unit economics, and customer experience to meet portfolio KPIs.
• Account Management & Line Management: Define and execute in-life account management strategiescredit line increases and decreases, APR repricing, authorization strategy, over-limit tolerance, retention offers, and reactivation of dormant accountsgrounded in behavioral scores, bureau triggers, and payment performance.
• Servicing & Collections Strategy Partnership: Partner with Servicing and Collections to optimize the trade-off between collections effort and returning-customer strategybalancing loss mitigation, right-party treatment, and future eligibility/offer generation so that in-life and post-delinquency actions reinforce lifetime value; align treatments with credit segmentation and expected loss.
• Innovate with ML/AI and Alternative Data: Direct the development and deployment of ML/AI credit and behavioral models, champion/challenger scorecards, and alternative data (cashflow/bank transaction data, employment/income verification, trended bureau attributes) to continually improve underwriting precision and returns.
• Credit Risk Appetite & Loss Forecasting: Ensure credit losses remain within the company's defined risk appetite; oversee vintage-level loss forecasting and roll-rate analytics for the Returning book.
• Policy, Rule & Decisioning Governance: Govern credit policy, rules, cutoffs, and decisioning thresholds end-to-endstandards for proposal, review, approval, deployment, monitoring, retirement, and change controlwith clear sign-off across Risk, Compliance, and Operations.
• Portfolio Monitoring & Segment Analytics: Analyze portfolio performance at a granular segment level (vintage, FICO/Vantage/Clarity band, product, term, loan amount, channel sub-segment, state) on an ongoing basis to identify key drivers, emerging trends, and required strategy actions.
• Executive Communication: Present data-driven recommendations to executive leadership and the Credit Risk Committee, translating complex credit analytics into clear, compelling narratives.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Finance, Portfolio Management, Capital Markets, Product, Marketing, Operations, Legal, Compliance, Engineering, and Fraud to design, implement, and monitor high-performing strategies; represent Returning channel credit in cross-functional prioritization.
• Vendor & Capability Discovery: Identify, evaluate, and build business cases for new bureaus, alternative data sources, verification vendors, and emerging technologies; own commercial trade-offs, benchmarking, and onboarding/retirement decisions.
• Test-and-Learn Strategy Development: Build and lead a strong test-and-learn disciplinechampion/challenger, policy back tests, holdouts, A/B and multivariate tests, and uplift measurement - to quantify the impact of strategy changes on loss, approval, take-rate, and downstream lifetime value; institutionalize test design, sizing, readouts, and scale-up decisions.
• Regulatory & Compliance Alignment: Ensure Returning channel credit strategy is aligned with applicable US consumer lending regulations and guidance, and partner with Compliance, Legal, and Internal Audit; support adverse action reasoning, model risk management, audits, and regulatory exams.
• Team Leadership: Lead, coach, and grow a distributed team of credit strategists, analysts, and data scientists across US and India; set priorities, performance expectations, hiring plans, and career paths, and cultivate an innovative .