Credit Risk Underwriter at Baobab Group

Baobab Group is a leading digital financial inclusion group focusing on serving individuals, micro and small businesses in Africa and China. Our mission is to unleash the potential of our clients offering them simple and easy to use financial services. Founded in 2005 as Microcred, today Baobab has over a million customers and 3,800 employees operating in Burkina Faso, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Credit Risk Underwriter

Location: Yaba, Lagos
Employment Type: Full-time

Job Responsibilities
Strategy:

• To interact with relationship managers in developing credit requests to be presented to the loan committee for final approval; communicating their recommendation of terms and conditions; identifying items that warrant additional information or analysis with the potential customer; and determining if the request is an acceptable credit risk.
• To undertake research to be abreast with economic trends, industry analysis, regulatory requirements, and business and trade publications which could impact credit risk and/or the probable success of current customers and applicants.
• To represent the credit department at loan committee meetings responding to questions regarding the analysis of individual credits; modify credit packages to represent the committee’s final approval, as well as communicate senior management’s comments and requests of the commercial underwriting department to other staffs

Execution:

• Responsible for underwriting commercial loans and preparing presentations
• Takes decision on credit applications under the supervision of senior underwriters
• Utilises provided software to score credit applications.
• Establishes rapport; maintains and grows important relationships within the portfolio.
• Performs annual reviews.
• Works with the credit administrator on policies and procedures.
• Provides support for business developers on new customers
• Undertakes the analysis, evaluation, and underwriting of proposed credit facilities for customers and prospects.
• Assesses credit opportunities; identifies key risks, and structures alternatives working with relationship managers and credit officers.
• Responsible for preparing in-depth credit packages.
• Responsible for conducting research on borrowers and industries
• Provides support to account officers on customer calls as needed
• Responsible for measuring covenants put in place within loan agreements, with a clear understanding of the effect and purpose of those loan covenants, and communicates the compliance of the borrowers to the relationship manager and chief credit officer as needed.
• Completes annual reviews, modifications, extensions, renewals, and new loan requests for customers with minimal required changes from the credit approvers.
• Analyzes more complex credits with assistance from senior department sta
• Applies experience with comparable credits to recommend appropriate covenants, terms, and conditions, and structure for a credit request.
• Identifies policy exceptions within a credit request.
• Discusses risk ratings and the rationale for the determination of acceptable credits with the relationship managers (RM) and credit approvers.

Requirements

• Requires a minimum of Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, or Accounting.
• 3 years of underwriting and analysis experience
• Having to complete a formal credit training program is an added advantage, and also must possess the ability to comprehend complex commercial credits
• Good communication skills.
• Analytical Skills.
• Technically conversant and able to collaborate easily with engineers;
• Computing languages knowledge is a plus

Application Closing Date
1st March, 2023.