Lending & Insurance Lead

Key Accountabilities

- Lending and Insurance Product Strategy Define du Pay's overall lending and embedded insurance strategy.
- Develop a clear multi-year product vision and roadmap.
- Identify the highest-value lending and insurance opportunities across du Pay's customer base.
- Develop differentiated propositions for different customer segments, including: Blue-collar customers
- Expatriates
- UAE nationals
- Existing du Pay customers
- New digitally acquired customers
- Eligible SME and merchant customers

- Identify opportunities to embed financial products directly into existing customer journeys.
- Develop clear build, buy or partner strategies for each product.
- Continuously monitor market trends, customer needs, technology developments and competitive activity

- Lending Product Portfolio Own the development and evolution of du Pay's lending portfolio, including opportunities such as: Micro-lending
- Short-term consumer credit
- Personal lending
- Salary-linked lending
- Transaction-based lending
- Cash-flow-based lending
- Device financing
- Embedded financing
- Buy-now-pay-later and instalment propositions, where strategically appropriate
- Merchant and SME lending opportunities
- Other responsible and data-driven lending products

- Key responsibilities will include: Develop product propositions and value propositions.
- Define eligibility and customer segmentation strategies.
- Develop product features and customer journeys.
- Define loan amounts, tenors, pricing principles and repayment mechanisms in collaboration with licensed lending partners.
- Develop customer acquisition and cross-sell strategies
- Identify opportunities to improve customer affordability and repayment outcomes.
- Continuously optimise products based on customer behaviour and portfolio performance

- Embedded Insurance Strategy Develop du Pay's embedded insurance product strategy and roadmap.
- Identify opportunities to integrate simple and relevant protection products into customer journeys, including: Remittances
- Payments and financial transactions
- Lending
- Device financing
- Savings
- Investments
- Other digital financial products

- Potential product opportunities may include: Device protection
- Transaction-related protection
- Loan-related protection
- Micro-insurance products
- Personal accident and protection products
- Travel-related protection
- Other simple and digitally distributed insurance propositions

- The successful candidate will: Identify relevant insurance use cases.
- Develop embedded customer journeys.
- Work with licensed insurance providers and intermediaries.
- Define product propositions and economics.
- Ensure a simple and transparent customer experience.
- Coordinate regulatory, legal and operational requirements.
- Develop scalable API-based insurance integrations

- Data, Credit Scoring and Decisioning A central responsibility of this role will be to support the development of du Pay's data-driven lending capability.
- The Manager – Lending & Insurance Products will work closely with Data, Technology, Risk and external partners to: Identify relevant data sources for credit decisioning and customer segmentation.
- Leverage financial transaction and payment behavior to improve lending propositions.
- Explore the use of telecommunications and other relevant data sources were permitted by applicable laws, regulations and customer consent requirements.
- Develop strategies for alternative data and behavioral credit assessment.
- Partner with leading credit scoring, decision-engine and analytics providers.
- Support the development and continuous enhancement of predictive models.
- Improve customer eligibility, approval rates and credit risk outcomes.
- Identify opportunities to create personalized product offers.
- Develop appropriate data governance and model monitoring processes

- Product Development and Delivery Lead the full product lifecycle from idea through launch and optimization.
- Translate customer, commercial and partner requirements into product specifications.
- Prepare product requirements documents, user journeys, user stories and acceptance criteria.
- Define Minimum Viable Products and phased delivery plans.
- Manage the lending and insurance product backlog.
- Work closely with Engineering, Technology, UX, Data and Operations teams.
- Lead product testing and customer acceptance testing.
- Coordinate partner and API integrations.
- Ensure operational readiness before product launch.
- Monitor performance and continuously optimize products.

- Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystem Development A key element of the role will be the ability to build and manage a strong external ecosystem.
- The Manager – Lending & Insurance Products will identify, evaluate and manage partnerships with: Lending Ecosystem Banks
- Finance companies
- Licensed lenders
- Balance-sheet providers
- Credit scoring providers
- Decision-engine providers
- Credit bureaus and relevant data providers
- Lending technology platforms
- Loan servicing and collections providers
- Fintech infrastructure providers

- Insurance Ecosystem Insurance companies
- Licensed insurance intermediaries
- Insurtech companies
- Insurance technology providers
- Embedded insurance platforms
- Claims and servicing providers
- The role will: Develop partner selection criteria.
- Conduct commercial and product evaluations.
- Support commercial negotiations.
- Develop partnership business cases.
- Define revenue-sharing and commercial models.
- Evaluate partner technology and API capabilities.
- Coordinate product and technology integrations.
- Monitor partner performance and service levels

- Commercial Strategy and Product Economics Develop business cases for new lending and insurance products. Define commercial models and product economics.
- Develop revenue and profitability models.
- Assess customer acquisition and lifetime-value economics.
- Monitor partner economics and revenue-sharing arrangements.
- Identify opportunities to improve unit economics.
- Develop cross-sell opportunities across the du Pay ecosystem.
- Support pricing strategies in collaboration with licensed partners and relevant Risk and Compliance functions

- Regulatory, Risk and Responsible Product Design Work closely with Legal, Compliance, Risk and external regulated partners.
- Ensure that regulatory and consumer protection requirements are incorporated into product design from the outset.
- Understand the product implications of requirements relating to: Customer affordability
- Creditworthiness
- Responsible lending
- Customer disclosures
- Consent and data usage
- Data privacy and protection
- Credit risk
- Collections and customer treatment
- Complaints management
- Product governance
- Insurance distribution
- Customer suitability, where applicable

- Ensure transparent and understandable customer communications.
- Coordinate product governance and approval processes

- Customer Experience Develop simple, transparent and intuitive customer journeys.
- Remove unnecessary complexity from lending and insurance products.
- Design frictionless digital application and onboarding experiences.
- Develop embedded product offers that are relevant to the customer's context.
- Ensure that customers clearly understand product features, costs, obligations and risks.
- Use customer research and behavioral data to improve conversion and customer outcomes.
- Continuously optimize the customer experience

Qualifications :

- Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business, Technology, Engineering or a related discipline.
- MBA or relevant professional qualifications are advantageous.
- CFA, FRM, professional credit qualifications or relevant insurance qualifications would be beneficial but are not mandatory

Experience:

- Digital lending platforms
- Fintech or embedded finance
- Alternative data and credit scoring
- Decision engines
- Machine-learning-based credit analytics
- Telecom data and financial-services products
- Device financing
- Micro-lending
- Insurance technology
- Embedded insurance
- API-based financial products
- UAE, GCC or broader MENA financial services

Skills

- Product Leadership Strong ability to develop a compelling product strategy.
- Excellent roadmap development and prioritization skills.
- Ability to translate complex financial products into simple customer propositions.

- Lending and Financial Services Expertise Strong understanding of lending products and economics.
- Understanding of credit decisioning and lending customer journeys.
- Familiarity with credit risk and responsible lending principles.

- Data and Analytics Strong understanding of the role of data in financial services.
- Ability to work effectively with data scientists and analytics teams.
- Understanding of alternative data and predictive modelling concepts.

- Commercial Acumen Ability to develop business cases.
- Strong understanding of unit economics and product profitability.
- Experience structuring partnership economics.

- Partnerships Strong relationship management and negotiation capabilities.
- Ability to engage with senior executives at banks, financial institutions, insurers and technology providers.

- Technology Strong understanding of digital product development.
- Familiarity with APIs and platform integrations.
- Ability to work effectively with Engineering and Technology teams.

- Execution Strong programmed and delivery management skills.
- Ability to manage multiple workstreams simultaneously.
- Comfortable operating in a fast-paced and evolving environment.
- Strong bias toward execution and delivery.

- Communication Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to explain complex lending, data and insurance concepts to senior management and non-specialist audiences