Credit Risk Country Lead

FINN · South Africa (Remote/Hybrid) · Full-time · Individual Contributor

About The Role 

FINN gives full-time employees fair access to their earned wages, alongside financial services to help them earn and save more. We're entering South Africa and need a Credit Risk Country Lead: a hands-on credit risk expert who will own the underwriting strategy, risk modelling, and associated regulatory compliance for the market. This is an individual contributor role for someone highly motivated and excited about helping to build from 0 to 1, then 1 to 100.

What You'll Do

• Design and own the credit risk framework and approval strategy for FINN's South African short-term credit / earned wage access product


• Build and maintain scoring and underwriting models using bureau and alternative data


• Source, integrate, and evaluate credit bureau data — primarily XDS and Experian — assessing scorecard performance, data quality, and commercial terms


• Ensure underwriting, pricing, and collections practices comply with National Credit Regulator (NCR) requirements and the National Credit Act (NCA)


• Monitor portfolio performance, build early-warning indicators for deterioration, and recommend threshold adjustments


• Run expected credit loss (ECL) modelling and support Finance on provisioning


• Report risk performance and regulatory status directly to leadership What We're Looking For ● 5+ years in credit risk within South Africa's short-term credit, micro-lending, or consumer lending market


• Hands-on experience navigating NCR registration, compliance, and reporting


• Direct experience working with and evaluating South African credit bureaus, specifically XDS and Experian (TransUnion or Compuscan a plus)


• Strong data analysis skills; comfortable building and validating scorecards independently


• Working knowledge of the National Credit Act, POPIA, and IFRS 9


• Able to operate independently as the sole risk expert in a new market, without a team underneath you

Why Join FINN?

• Own credit risk for an entire market from day one


• Direct impact on financial access for underbanked South African workers


• Work directly with leadership, no layers