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