Area Manager

Latitude Financial Services; Christchurch; Hybrid; NZD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Latitude Financial Services seeks an Area Manager to strengthen retailer partnerships and drive commercial performance. You will coach stores, ensure compliance, and grow finance penetration across your territory while collaborating with regional teams.

The role combines relationship management, training delivery, and data-driven improvements to optimize approvals, attach rates, and customer experience.

Qualifications

• Experience in partner management, enablement, operations or commercial support within a retail, financial services, payments, or franchise network.
• Strong understanding of POS finance, onboarding, pricing, applications, settlements, collateral, compliance.
• Ability to manage large portfolios with discipline and structured follow-through.

Responsibilities

• Build and strengthen relationships with regional store managers, owners and sales teams.
• Deliver a structured training framework to lift product confidence and responsible finance behaviours.
• Monitor training completion, recertification, and reinforce learnings.
• Analyse store KPIs and recommend targeted solutions to improve approvals and attach rates.
• Develop deep retailer insights and tailor support by store maturity and performance.
• Maintain accurate territory reporting and communicate findings to stakeholders.

Skills

Partner management

Enablement

Operations

CRM systems

Data analytics

Stakeholder engagement

Campaign coordination

AI tools familiarity

Tools

CRM platforms

Contract/order systems

Job description

At Latitude, our mission is clear: we make it possible with financing solutions in the moments that matter. Through our Sales Finance business, we partner with leading retailers to deliver flexible, accessible finance at the point of sale — helping partners grow, convert more customers, and deliver better experiences.

Our strategic retail partners represent some of the most complex and high‑impact relationships within Latitude. Effective execution across partnerships of this scale requires strong enablement, disciplined follow‑up, and clear ownership of issues as they arise.

The Area Manager plays a critical role in strengthening Latitude’s relationships with retail partners and driving commercial performance across their territory. They act as the primary connection point between Latitude and regional/store teams, ensuring partners are equipped, supported, and confident to deliver exceptional customer and sales outcomes.

The role combines relationship management, coaching, compliance leadership, and operational execution to grow sales, uplift partner capability, and maintain high standards of customer experience.

Key Responsibilities

Partner & Store Relationship Management

• Build and strengthen relationships with regional, store managers, owners, and sales teams across your territory.
• Develop a strong understanding of each store’s commercial drivers, customer experience priorities, and operational challenges.
• Act as a trusted advisor, supporting stores to maximise finance penetration, conversion, and sales outcomes.

Training, Capability & Compliance

• Deliver a structured training framework that lifts product confidence, selling capability, and responsible finance behaviours across all stores.
• Ensure training consistently promotes compliant practices aligned with Latitude’s policies, advertising standards, and responsible lending obligations.
• Monitor training completion and knowledge gaps, ensuring recertification and reinforcement where required.
• Commit to business sales goals and targets, driving results through collaboration, coaching, and joint problem‑solving with retail sales teams.
• Identify sales opportunities, performance variations, and emerging trends, and implement tactical actions to support growth.
• Analyse store‑level KPIs and recommend targeted solutions to improve application quality, approvals, and attach rates.

Retailer Insight & Operational Understanding

• Develop a deep understanding of how your retailers operate — their goals, operating rhythms, customer journey, and business model.
• Tailor support based on store maturity, performance, and capability, ensuring interventions are meaningful and commercially impactful.
• Capture store feedback and channel insights back into national teams to drive continuous improvement.
• Provide responsive, on‑call servicing support to retail partners ensuring timely resolution of queries.
• Maintain strong communication loops with internal teams to close out partner actions and escalations.
• Ensure stores have up‑to‑date POS finance collateral, system readiness, and compliant promotional materials.
• Support execution of national and local campaigns, ensuring stores understand the offer, requirements, and expected outcomes.
• Conduct regular store visits, quality checks, and follow‑ups to ensure sustained adherence and performance.

Reporting & Territory Management

• Maintain accurate territory‑level reporting on store engagement, training status, performance trends, and identified risks.
• Prioritise territory actions using data‑led insights, focusing effort where it drives the greatest commercial return.
• Keep internal stakeholders informed of key wins, emerging issues, and opportunities across your area.

What you’ll bring:

• Experience in partner management, enablement, operations or commercial support within a retail, financial services, payments, or franchise network environment.
• Strong understanding of POS finance, including core processes (onboarding, pricing, applications, settlements, collateral, compliance).
• High level of organisational discipline — able to manage a large portfolio (1,500 SMB partners) with accuracy, prioritisation and structured follow‑through.
• Experience working with CRM and contract/order management systems, with a focus on maintaining data integrity and hygiene.
• Proven ability to deliver compliance‑led activity, such as training, governance forum inputs, evidence collection, and issue logging.
• Capability in coordinating promotional campaigns, including briefing, stakeholder alignment, asset management, execution, and performance tracking.
• Analytical capability, with confidence using dashboards, KPIs and insights to identify portfolio issues, opportunities and next‑best actions.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, particularly with head‑office roles across franchisors, buying groups, and multi‑site operators.
• Comfort driving accountability without formal authority, coordinating across sales, marketing, product, compliance and operations teams.
• Ability to resolve issues end‑to‑end, working through ambiguity, identifying root causes, and ensuring actions are closed out.
• Clear, concise written and verbal communication skills, including documenting minutes, actions, partner updates and campaign summaries.
• Continuous improvement mindset, with the ability to spot inefficiencies, propose improvements, and scale processes for a high‑volume partner base.
• Team leadership or coaching experience (advantageous but not essential)
• You are familiar with AI tools - comfortable using tools to accelerate insights, automate routine work, prepare reporting, and tailor content quickly and effectively.

Sound like you?

That's a good sign! In return for your energy and ideas, we offer a flexible working environment and great compensation. We always support a safe, healthy, engaging, and productive working environment for all employees and workers, whether that be in your home and office, or a combination of both.

We make it possible

– for our customers, our partners, and our people.

We believe doing great work starts with feeling supported. Our values, take ownership, pursue excellence, win together, and create tomorrow, aren't just words. They show up in how we work, how we lead, and how we look after our team.

We make it possible...

• to spend more time with your loved ones – with an extra week of paid leave each year through our Take 5 initiative.
• to balance work and life – with a hybrid working model, giving you the flexibility to work from home while connecting in the office.
• to put your wellbeing first – with Sonder, a 24/7 support app for mental and physical wellness.
• to access great financial benefits – with discounts on Latitude products and services.

When our people thrive, everything else follows.

Successful applicants will be required to complete a background check (including criminal history and bankruptcy check) prior to commencement of employment.