Senior Manager - Credit Risk & Payment Assistance

The Opportunity

The Senior Manager - Credit Risk & Payment Assistance is the senior functional leader accountable for the enterprise-wide customer risk lifecycle across Consumer Energy and Telco operations. The role sets the strategic direction for portfolio risk, fraud prevention, payment assistance, collections and recoveries, balancing customer outcomes, regulatory obligations and long-term commercial value.

Reporting to the GM - Service, the role operates as a key member of the Consumer leadership team, providing authoritative advice on risk appetite, portfolio performance, customer payment strategy and emerging threats. It leads significant onshore and offshore operations, owns material third-party relationships and investment priorities, and sponsors transformation that strengthens controls, accelerates automation and delivers sustainable improvements in cash, bad debt, fraud and customer experience.

What you'll be responsible for

• Enterprise credit risk, fraud strategy and governance: Set the strategic direction, risk appetite and governance framework for Consumer credit and fraud across Energy and Telco; provide executive advice on portfolio exposure, emerging threats and material control issues; approve policies, decisioning strategies and risk tolerances; and ensure effective oversight of identity misuse, account takeover, first-party fraud, payment fraud and chargebacks.
• Portfolio performance, collections and recoveries: Hold end-to-end accountability for bad debt, cash collections, arrears, recoveries and debt sale performance; establish portfolio strategies, investment priorities and performance guardrails; challenge business settings and treatment effectiveness; and direct agency, legal recovery and debt sale outcomes to maximise sustainable value.
• Payment assistance strategy: Set the operating strategy, service standards and governance for payment assistance; ensure customers experiencing financial difficulty receive fair, timely and sustainable outcomes; oversee assessment and arrangement effectiveness; and influence enterprise policy, product and process decisions that affect customer payment outcomes.
• Transformation, data and technology: Sponsor a multi-year transformation roadmap across risk decisioning, collections, payment journeys and fraud management; secure alignment on investment priorities; deploy advanced analytics, real-time monitoring and automated case management; and establish benefits realisation disciplines that deliver measurable commercial, customer and control outcomes.
• Regulatory, assurance and executive governance: Act as the senior accountable leader for operational compliance across the portfolio; maintain readiness for regulatory review and independent assurance; oversee material incidents and remediation; provide clear reporting and recommendations to executive governance forums; and ensure regulatory change is implemented sustainably and on time.
• Leadership, partnerships and organisational capability: Lead a complex onshore and offshore function through senior leaders; create clear accountability and succession depth; own strategic relationships with agencies, credit bureaus and payment partners; shape workforce and sourcing decisions; and build a high-performance culture grounded in judgement, customer outcomes and continuous improvement.

What you'll bring to the role

• Substantial senior leadership experience with end-to-end accountability for credit risk, fraud prevention, collections, recoveries, payment assistance or payments in a large regulated business.
• Demonstrated ownership of material portfolio outcomes, including bad debt, cash collection, fraud loss, customer outcomes and operating cost.
• Proven ability to set enterprise strategy, risk appetite, policy and governance, and to influence executive decisions across competing commercial, customer and regulatory priorities.
• Deep expertise in fraud typologies, identity verification, payment authentication, transaction monitoring, chargebacks, investigations and emerging-threat response.
• Strong command of payment assistance, financial difficulty, collections and customer protection frameworks.
• Track record sponsoring complex transformation, automation, analytics and control-uplift programs from strategy through benefits realisation.
• Exceptional commercial and financial acumen, with the ability to translate portfolio insight into investment choices, operating priorities and measurable value.
• Experience leading large, geographically dispersed teams through leaders and managing critical outsourced and third-party partnerships.
• Executive-level communication, influencing and regulatory engagement capability, including the ability to present complex risk matters with clarity and authority.
• Experience across both Energy and Telecommunications is highly desirable.
• Experience with Gentrack, Equifax, fraud and collections decision engines, debt sale and agency management programs is required.