Area Manager - Education Loan/Senior Area Manager - Education Loan

Job Purpose

Assess Education Loan applications independently and consistently, balancing customer eligibility, repayment capacity, academic and employability factors, collateral support, legal and technical acceptability, and portfolio quality.

• Review applicant and co-applicant identity, relationship, academics, admission, institution, course, country, test scores and requested funding.

• Assess income, banking, bureau, obligations, repayment capacity and policy eligibility.

• Evaluate cost of education, scholarships, margin or own contribution, living expenses and the proposed loan amount.

• Assess secured and unsecured structures, including property, gold or other approved collateral, through applicable reports and controls.

• Own or review Legal and Technical Assessment requirements for secured cases and ensure satisfactory reports are available before progressing the credit decision.

• Engage and coordinate with approved third-party valuers and lawyers to facilitate timely valuation, technical and legal reports; review report validity, observations, conditions and exceptions for credit consideration.

• Review verification outcomes, fraud indicators, deviations and mitigants, and raise evidence-based queries.

• Prepare or validate credit assessment notes, recommendations, sanction conditions and deviation matrices.

• Decide, recommend, refer or decline cases within the approved credit authority matrix and ensure complete decision audit trail.

• Monitor underwriting quality, approval, rejection and deviation trends, turnaround time, productivity and portfolio feedback.

• Coordinate with Sales, Risk, Operations, RCU, Collections, Legal, Technical, collateral teams and external service providers while preserving independent credit judgement.

• Provide market and portfolio feedback for policy refinement, process improvement and new product launches.

• Translate credit plans into regional or central execution priorities.

• Review team underwriting quality, productivity, controls and capability.

• Manage escalations and vendor performance across assigned locations or work queues.

Key Decisions / Dimensions

• Approve, recommend, refer or decline cases strictly within the approved credit authority matrix and risk policy.

• Assess the acceptability of legal, technical, valuation and collateral observations for credit decisioning within delegated authority.

• Escalate title, valuation, technical, fraud, policy, compliance and other material exceptions to the prescribed authority.

• Numeric sanction and deviation authorities are to be defined in the approved delegation matrix.

Key interactions

Internal Sales, Product, Risk, Operations, RCU/Fraud Control, Collections, Legal, Technical, Collateral, Compliance, Finance, Technology and COE.

External Students, co-applicants, approved valuers, lawyers, legal and technical agencies, verification partners and other approved service providers.

Major Challenges

• Balancing growth, customer experience, turnaround time and portfolio quality.

• Managing incomplete or inconsistent academic, financial, collateral, legal and technical information.

• Coordinating internal teams and third-party agencies while maintaining independent credit judgement.

• Identifying and resolving adverse legal, technical, valuation, fraud or policy observations within defined authority.

Required Qualifications and Experience

Graduate or postgraduate in Finance, Commerce, Economics, Management or a related discipline. 3-5 years of relevant credit or underwriting experience, including exposure to team, location, portfolio or complex case management; Education Loan exposure preferred.

Critical skills and knowledge

• Credit appraisal and financial analysis

• Bureau, banking and income assessment

• Academic and employability assessment

• Secured and unsecured lending

• Legal and Technical report interpretation

• Property valuation, collateral and title-risk awareness

• Third-party valuer, lawyer and vendor coordination

• Fraud-risk awareness and decision writing

• Excel, presentation and business MIS capability

• High standards of integrity, customer confidentiality and control discipline