Job Description
We are seeking a talented and experienced professional to join Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia PLC as the Manager of the MPESA Credit Portfolio. In this role, you will play a crucial part in driving the success and long-term viability of our digital lending and savings products. Your primary focus will be on monitoring and optimizing key lending and savings indicators, evaluating product performance, and implementing strategies to enhance portfolio quality and customer adoption.
Responsibilities
At Safaricom Ethiopia, we are a purpose
‑
led technology company dedicated to transforming lives through digital connectivity and inclusive financial services. In less than five years, we have grown to serve 15 million customers, with our network now reaching 62% of Ethiopia’s population — a testament to our bold vision and trusted partnerships.
Guided by our core values of customer obsession, innovation, integrity, and collaboration, we are building a workplace that is dynamic, inclusive, and empowering. We believe our greatest strength lies in our people. That is why, for three consecutive years, we have proudly earned the Top Employer Award — recognition of our unwavering commitment to fostering a supportive, innovative, and inclusive environment.
Join Safaricom Ethiopia and be part of a team that is shaping the digital future of Ethiopia. Here, your work has meaning, your voice matters, and your growth is our priority. Together, we are transforming lives for a digital future.
Role purpose:
The Manager – MPESA Credit Portfolio will be responsible for the end-to-end performance and long-term health of digital lending and savings portfolios. This includes monitoring key lending indicators such as disbursements, outstanding balances, active borrowers, repayment rates, roll rates, NPLs, write-offs, and monetization, as well as savings growth, active savers, balances, and customer usage. The role will evaluate product performance and progress, monitor credit scoring effectiveness, and implement actions to improve portfolio quality, customer adoption, risk management, and sustainable growth.
Insights, Research and Analysis
Conduct research and analysis on emerging credit risk methodologies, data sources, and technologies, ensuring continuous enhancement of portfolio management and risk decisioning capabilities
Leverage insights generated through research and analysis to guide the evolution of credit risk management capabilities across lending and scoring platforms, including scorecards, risk features, decision engines, and underlying systems.
Synthesize insights from product performance, customer behavior, and market trends to guide strategic decisions on scoring, pricing, exposure management, and lifecycle risk strategies.
Portfolio Planning and Management
Define and implement data-driven portfolio management and risk analytics frameworks, in collaboration with Big Data and Data Science teams, to support effective credit risk management
Provide strategic guidance on credit risk assumptions, risk appetite, and portfolio strategy, informed by product performance, solution effectiveness, and platform capabilities.
Leverage advanced analytics and big data techniques to enhance credit risk management and portfolio management practices, driving continuous improvement in underwriting, pricing, and exposure management.
Monitor cohort and vintage performance by tracking repayment behavior, roll rates, defaults, and profitability across customer acquisition periods, enabling early assessment of portfolio quality and long-term product sustainability.
Identify early warning indicators and deterioration trends by analyzing changes in customer behavior, repayment patterns, income signals, and transaction activity, allowing for proactive intervention before material portfolio degradation occurs.
Apply portfolio insights to optimize product design, pricing, limit strategies, and tenure structures across different stages of the product lifecycle.
End to end support of product life cycle based on the existing product analyses as well in state from data and finding.
Utilize advanced analytical tools and platforms (e.g. SQL, Oracle BI, Power BI) to generate actionable insights that inform portfolio performance, risk management decisions, and product optimization.
Support and execute data-driven decisions based on observed risk trends, customer behaviour, and product performance metrics.
Work closely with Data Science and Analytics teams to enhance scoring features, improve scorecard performance, and strengthen the identification and differentiation of good versus high-risk customers.
Design and map risk management and portfolio strategies to the full digital credit product lifecycle covering launch, scale-up, maturity, and optimization to proactively address expected product and portfolio challenges.
Define and continuously refine the collections and recovery strategy for the digital credit portfolio, including segmentation of delinquent accounts, treatment paths across DPD stages, and escalation frameworks aligned to portfolio risk profiles.
Monitor and assess the effectiveness of collection mechanisms—including automated collections, partner-led recoveries, and manual interventions—by tracking cure rates, roll rates, recovery ratios, and cost of collections, and implement data-driven improvements to optimize recovery outcomes and portfolio quality.
Customer and End-User Support
Work closely with customer support and operations teams to identify customer pain points, ensuring frontline teams are equipped to respond effectively to customer queries related to limits or collection mechanisms used.
Monitor customer interaction data (complaints, queries, failed repayments, escalations) to identify systemic issues impacting portfolio performance, customer experience, or repayment behaviour, and drive corrective actions.
Support the design and optimization of self-service and automated support mechanisms (e.g. SMS, USSD, app notifications, IVR), reducing operational costs while improving customer understanding and repayment outcomes.
Use customer level insights and feedback to inform improvements in product design, communication, pricing transparency, and repayment journeys.
Post Launch governance
Establish a structured post-launch monitoring framework to track portfolio performance against approved business, risk, and monetization objectives, ensuring early identification of deviations.
Conduct regular portfolio health reviews covering disbursements, repayment behavior, roll rates, NPLs, recoveries, write-offs, and customer outcomes, with clearly defined escalation and remediation processes.
Oversee ongoing risk governance by monitoring adherence to approved credit policies, cut-off thresholds, limit strategies, and pricing parameters, and ensure any changes follow formal approval processes.
Implement champion–challenger governance for scorecards, pricing, and collection strategies, ensuring controlled experimentation and evidence-based decisions before scaling changes.
Review and govern the effectiveness of collection and recovery mechanisms, including automated collections, partner-led recoveries, and manual interventions, driving continuous improvement in cure and recovery rates.
Facilitate regular partner performance reviews with banks and third parties, assessing funding utilization, portfolio quality, recovery outcomes, and operational effectiveness.
Credit Scoring and Risk Analytics
Support the development, validation, and enhancement of credit scoring models.
Monitor credit score performance, approval rates, and customer repayment behavior
Identify relevant data sources and features to improve credit decisioning.
Work with risk, data, and technology teams to implement and optimize credit scoring strategies
Core competencies, knowledge and experience:
Customer Obsession
Promote customer education initiatives that build financial literacy, enabling customers to understand how to use digital credit products responsibly and recognize the long-term benefits of positive financial behavior.
Deepen team connection to our customers and communities.
Foster authentic relationships with customers and partners that build trust.
Explicitly take customer-centric decisions and take personal ownership to achieve results.
Simplify processes through digitalization and promote a digital mindset and digital first customer experience.
Stay focused on the big priorities, know when to make meaningful trade-offs and demonstrate brilliant execution.
Purpose
Create an inspiring vision for your team to drive strategy and performance.
Show ambition and courage, empowering others to go beyond the plan.
Bold and challenge teams to reimagine how things are done.
Prompt new thinking and ideas by asking “what if” questions.
Use knowledge of the external environment (customers, partners, competition, external bodies) to identify and act on opportunities for growth at pace.
Innovation
Encourage and sponsor innovation in credit risk, pricing, collections, and portfolio strategies, testing new approaches through controlled pilots and data-led experiments to drive sustainable growth.
Approach both successes and failures with curiosity and resilience, systematically capturing lessons learned and applying
insights to strengthen portfolio management and credit outcomes.
Actively share learnings, insights, and portfolio performance outcomes to build collective understanding and continuously elevate portfolio management capability across teams.
Rapidly learn from digital adoption, customer behavior, and portfolio performance data, using insights to drive simplicity, scalability, operational efficiency, and automation in digital credit delivery.
Collaboration & Stakeholder Management
Clearly articulate the portfolio management team’s role in delivering the digital credit strategy, ensuring priorities, resources, and capabilities are aligned to both current...