Collections Manager

Alumo Energy; Pretoria; On-site; ZAR 700,000 - 900,000; Full time

Job summary

Alumo Energy in Pretoria seeks a Collections Manager to lead the day-to-day collections function, improving cash recovery and reducing arrears. You will manage a small team, analyse portfolio risk, and drive process improvements across workflows, controls, and reporting.

The role combines hands-on leadership with default analysis, quality assurance, and covenant monitoring to strengthen credit risk position while protecting customer care standards.

Qualifications

• The role requires 5+ years in collections or debt recovery.
• At least 2 years of supervision or team leadership.
• Strong data analysis, process improvement, and reporting skills.
• Knowledge of SA credit, collections regs, and customer treatment standards.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop three Collections Agents with daily coaching and reviews.
• Set clear activity, recovery targets, and monitor performance.
• Oversee collections workflow across delinquency stages and escalations.
• Ensure accurate recording of payments, promises, disputes, and notes.
• Identify risks, trends, and corrective actions from portfolio data.
• Own quality assurance: scripts, processes, and control framework.
• Maintain covenant monitoring and collaborate with Finance and Risk teams.

Skills

Team leadership

Coaching

Analytical thinking

Communication

Attention to detail

Credit knowledge

Stakeholder mgmt

Education

Bachelor's degree in Finance/Business

Tools

Excel

Power BI

CRM systems

Dialer software

Job description

The Collections Manager leads the day-to-day collections function, ensuring that overdue accounts are managed promptly, professionally, consistently, and in line with approved processes and controls.

The role is accountable for improving cash recovery, reducing arrears and defaults, strengthening agent performance, and providing clear insight into collections performance and portfolio risk. It combines hands-on people management with default analysis, quality assurance, reporting, process improvement, and covenant monitoring.

Key responsibilities

Team leadership and performance

• Lead, coach, and develop three Collections Agents through daily support, regular one-to-ones, call/account reviews, training, and performance feedback.
• Set clear daily, weekly, and monthly activity and recovery expectations.
• Monitor agent productivity, quality, attendance, follow-up discipline, and adherence to approved collection processes.
• Address underperformance promptly through documented coaching and improvement plans.
• Act as the escalation point for complex, sensitive, disputed, or high-value accounts.

Collections operations

• Manage the collections workflow across all assigned delinquency stages, ensuring accounts are prioritised, contacted, followed up, and escalated within agreed timeframes.
• Ensure payment arrangements, promises to pay, disputes, account notes, and all customer interactions are accurately recorded.
• Monitor broken promises to pay, failed payment methods, repeat delinquency, and high-risk accounts; ensure timely remedial action.
• Maintain a professional, fair, and customer-conscious collections approach while protecting the company’s cash flow and credit risk position.
• Coordinate referral or handover to legal, external collections agencies, or other recovery channels where approved.

Default and portfolio analysis

• Analyse arrears, defaults, recoveries, roll rates, cure rates, payment behaviour, and root causes of delinquency.
• Identify emerging risk trends by customer, product, segment, channel, geographic area, and delinquency bucket.
• Translate analysis into practical actions: changes to prioritisation, call strategies, payment arrangements, escalation criteria, or upstream process fixes.
• Prepare clear daily, weekly, and monthly reporting for management, including commentary on risks, trends, corrective actions, and forecast outcomes.

Processes, controls, and quality assurance

• Own and continuously improve the collections operating procedures, scripts, workflows, escalation matrix, and control framework.
• Establish a regular quality-assurance programme, including call, correspondence, account-note, and process-adherence reviews.
• Test that required actions, approvals, documentation, and customer communications are completed accurately and on time.
• Identify control gaps, errors, recurring process failures, and data-quality issues; implement and track corrective actions.
• Ensure the team operates in accordance with internal policies, privacy requirements, applicable collections regulations, and approved customer-treatment standards.

Covenant and risk monitoring

• Monitor collections performance against agreed funding covenants and risk thresholds.
• Maintain a covenant dashboard that shows current performance, headroom, forecast position, emerging breaches, and corrective actions.
• Escalate actual or potential covenant breaches promptly, with evidence-based recommendations and a recovery plan.
• Partner with Finance, Credit/Risk, Operations, and other relevant teams to resolve portfolio issues that contribute to arrears or defaults.
• Identify and deliver practical improvements that increase recovery rates, reduce avoidable defaults, improve agent productivity, or strengthen controls.
• Review the effectiveness of collection strategies and campaigns, measure results, and recommend refinements.
• Work with relevant teams to address upstream causes of delinquency, such as billing errors, onboarding gaps, payment failures, customer disputes, or weak credit controls.

Core measures of success

• Arrears and default balance by ageing bucket
• Cure rate and roll rate
• Contact and right-party-contact rate
• Agent productivity, quality score, and process adherence
• Recovery rate and write-off reduction
• Covenant compliance, headroom, and timely escalation
• Accuracy and timeliness of collections reporting
• Number and impact of completed process/control improvements

Required experience and capabilities

• 5+ years’ experience in collections, arrears management, debt recovery, credit control, or a related credit-risk environment.
• At least 2 years’ experience supervising or leading a collections team.
• Demonstrable experience improving collections performance through coaching, data analysis, and process improvement.
• Strong understanding of arrears management, payment arrangements, default management, and escalation practices.
• Strong numerical and analytical ability, including advanced Excel; experience with reporting dashboards or Power BI is advantageous.
• Ability to interpret portfolio performance, identify root causes, and turn analysis into clear action plans.
• Strong written and verbal communication, leadership, judgement, and stakeholder-management skills.
• High attention to detail, fairness, resilience, and a firm but respectful approach with customers and team members.
• Experience in retail credit.
• Experience with collections systems, CRMs, dialers, payment platforms, or workflow automation.
• Knowledge of the collection, consumer-credit, data-protection, and debt-recovery requirements applicable in South Africa.