ABHFL-Area Credit Manager-Retail- Ludhiana

Job Description

Position purpose

The purpose of this job is to execute risk and credit operations on assigned transactions in alignment with established frameworks and processes, making sure effective and efficient loan underwriting across ABHFL service offerings for sound portfolio quality management. This role is expected to take approval decisions as per approval matrix after due creditworthiness and risk assessment making sure process adherence, and collaborate with Sales, Operations and Technical group colleagues to make sure robust risk management operations.

Position context & Key challenges

Organizational Context

Key Aspects:

Part of the Aditya Birla Financial Service Group (ABFSG), Aditya Birla Housing Finance Limited (ABHFL) is registered with the National Housing Bank as a housing finance company under the National Housing Bank Act, 1987. The company offers a complete range of housing finance solutions such as home loans, home improvement and home construction loans, balance transfer and top-up loans, loans against property and construction finance. The company acquired its license on 9th July 2014 and has aggressive growth plans.

ABHFL operates in the Rs. 11.4 trillion Indian Housing Finance market, which has grown at a steady rate of 17% CAGR over the last 3 years while reporting good asset quality despite challenges in the operating environment. While the industry is dominated by five large groups, there has been an emergence of newer entrants in niche segments like affordable housing and self-employed borrowers, given the high potential in these segments. Despite increased focus by banks, HFCs have been able to sustain their share in the mortgage market and has remained stable at ~37% as on December 2015.

Position context

Key Aspects:

The Risk group provides core underwriting services fundamental to the ABHFL business health, risk management and sustainability. Structured as a dual to the Sales/ Sourcing group, with positions mapped against corresponding Sales roles across the organization, the Risk group is tasked with necessary controls and process checks to make sure business performance and health.

While the core responsibility for this function is to control the business via robust underwriting and risk management, assisting business expansion via joint evaluation of different product/ market growth proposals with the Sales group is also an important contribution.

The Head-Risk plays a vital role in securing the organization against diverse risks in the course of business operations. This role is tasked with setting up requisite underwriting and risk management frameworks and processes for robust and efficient creditworthiness and risk assessment, and consequent inputs for business decisions (loan approval/ rejection, business expansion, etc.)

Key Challenges:

While the ABFL Mortgages group also works with retail clients in the property space, the ABHFL business is exposed to the additional Construction Risk, i.e. risk from under construction projects not getting completed as planned. The Risk Group must factor for this when designing and executing control mechanisms and evaluating business proposals.

ABHFL is in its inception phase as a company and in the midst of rapid growth. The Risk function must therefore be able to balance priorities of risk management and business growth efficiently, without increasing sub-prime exposures or impacting business health and sustainability.

The housing space is characterized by state-wise norms and business practices, as well as varied interpretations of regulatory guidelines by different stakeholders. It is therefore essential for the Risk function to remain up to date on business practices/ norms across the country and work within regulatory guidelines in a manner that minimizes business risk and also supports growth objectives.

Enabling Skill Sets & Qualifications

Critical skill sets required to meet these challenges include strong business and commercial acumen, analytical capabilities, good stakeholder management and presentation capabilities, and group management and execution capabilities.

Education & experience required to fulfil this profile are a CA/ MBA-Finance with minimum 4-7 yrs of experience in a bank/ NBFC/ HFC, of which at least recent 2- 3 yrs experience should be in overseeing risk and underwriting in an HFC.

Core result areas

KRA (Accountabilities) (Max 1325 Characters)

Assisting Actions (Max 1325 Characters)

KRA1

Underwriting and Portfolio Quality Management

Execute risk and credit operations for assigned transactions in adherence with defined frameworks and principles across ABHFL business lines

Evaluate and approve proposals as per defined approval matrix, seeking guidance from seniors and assisting peers on specific cases as required

Liaise with relevant Legal, Technical and other verification vendors for Legal-Technical evaluations and clarifications in complex cases, as required

Monitor the bounce rates as per threshold limits.

KRA2

Process Efficiency

Execute risk operations efficiently and in a manner that enables business performance while making sure risk management imperatives

Collaborate seamlessly with Credit Processing Analysts and Credit Analysts to make sure files are logged appropriately and analyzed thoroughly

Work as per process-driven coordination mechanisms with Sales and Operations teams for effective decision making and problem solving in line with business and risk management needs; escalate to RCM as required

Effectively overseeing external vendors to make sure quality of reports & TAT

Efficiently track Cost and make sure they are within budgeted levels.

Make sure accurate data capture in LOS and sustain high quality of documentation.

Make sure collection of Post disbursal documents within assigned time frame.

KRA3

Risk Compliance & Control

Make sure compliance with established risk management principles and norms; compile periodic and need based MIS, reports, escalation case documents, etc.

Conduct local risk operations in line with defined Maker-Checker mechanism with Sales and Operations teams in a systematic manner, across key aspects such as exception approvals, collateral valuation, PDD completion, cheque bounce collections, etc.

Make sure minimal critical observations in Audit and also to make sure all observations are resolved within specified TATs.

KRA4

Collection Efficiency

Work in alignment with process-driven mechanisms for coordination with the Collections/ Operations group on tracking delinquency cases and driving collections efficiently and effectively

Escalate specific/ complex cases, as required, to RCM for recovery and delinquency/ NPA avoidance

Monitoring of delinquent portfolios. Liaison with key delinquent clients and back up collections group for resolutions of all cases

Report fraud cases to Risk monitoring group and Regional/Zonal Risk Head.

KRA5

Business Growth and Sustainability

Work in partnership with Sales and Operations colleagues on case-based decision making for effective back up on business growth and sustainability

KRA6

Self-Development & Internal Stakeholder Coordination

Seek development to execute better risk assessment and loan underwriting via technical skill-up (e.g. proficiency on legal & technical documents, property business practices & norms, etc.) and role clarity

Sustain relationships with internal stakeholders for smooth coordination on complex/ escalation/ exception cases

This opening is for the ABHFL-Area Credit Manager-Retail- Ludhiana position in Feroze G Mkt Ludhiana.