Credit Field Operations Manager

Job Title:            Credit Field Operations Manager

Department:       Kenya Customer Finance

Report line:        Head of Customer Finance

About ENGIE Energy Access

ENGIE Energy Access is one of the leading Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGo) and mini-grids solutions providers in Africa, with a mission to deliver affordable, reliable and sustainable energy solutions and life-changing services with exceptional customer experience. The company is a result of the integration of Fenix International, ENGIE Mobisol and ENGIE PowerCorner; and develops innovative, offgrid solar solutions for homes, public services and businesses, enabling customers and distribution partners access to clean, affordable energy. The PAYGo solar home systems are financed through affordable installments from $0.19 per day and the minigrids foster economic development by enabling electrical productive use and triggering business opportunities for entrepreneurs in rural communities. With over 1,700 employees, operations in nine countries across Africa (Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia), almost 1.5 million customers and over 7 million lives impacted so far, ENGIE Energy Access aims to remain the leading clean energy company, serving millions of customers across Africa by 2025.

www.engie-energyaccess.com

Job Overview

The Customer Finance Team plays a pivotal role in ensuring the overall success of our largely unbanked customers in completing their loans and getting continued access to clean, reliable energy. The team works cross-functionally with our commercial, customer experience, product development and operations on the ground to ensure that we provide all customers with successful responsible onboarding and offer constant support through adequate monitoring and interventions all the way through the lifetime of our customers’ loans.

The Customer Finance Operations Manager will be fundamental to the successful implementation of our Customer Finance Strategy and in achieving our ambitious goals. S/he will work cross-functionally with a wide range of teams acting as the “eyes, ears and mouth” of the field teams in their responsibilities related to collections. They’ll work extremely closely with the Commercial Team to support in effectively carrying out Customer Finance related field activities by building out operational processes, systems and tools and making sure the right people get training and support to perform their role in the credit cycle and customer account management. They will work with the Head of Customer Finance and the Global team to ensure application of operational best practices across the credit cycle. They will also lead (from the Customer Finance side) the implementation and operationalization of new processes and innovations that come out of pilots run by the Customer Finance team.

The roles requires the Field Operations Manager to spend at least 40% of her/his time in the field.

Responsibilities

Field Team Activity Monitoring & Oversight – 20%

• Work closely with Commercial, CX and CF teams to align on ambitious but achievable targets and benchmarks for the activities to be carried out in the field related to collections and repossessions and the targeted outcomes on credit performance improvement
• Manage first missed payment escalation routines
• Manage handling and reassignment of orphaned customers
• Routinely monitor the capacity requirements per each Hub as per the Orphaned Portfolio, and ensure this information is trickled down as targets for the Regional Trainers, responsible for hiring the Collection Champions
• Responsible for ensuring proper training and compliance on sales processes and field escalation activities
• Implement and track field initiatives (e.g. Home Visits, Repossessions, Tamper Response Planning, Field Team Compensation, etc.)
• Monitor and report on performance of all Field Recovery Operations, on a weekly and monthly basis, from collection champions, sales agents, hub operators as well as technicians.
• Generate reports on our Field Customer Finance related activities, identifying where we are behind/on-track to our plan and detailing action plans and next steps to improve performance
• Identify areas of risk and under-performance in our Customer Finance Field Operations and make sure they are escalated appropriately
• Work with the Finance team to accurately manage and track all field cost/expenses related to credit activities (especially those within the Customer Finance department) to ensure our OpEx remains within the appropriate corridors.
• Work with the data analyst on ad-hoc credit-related analyses and develop key insights and trends to aid the consumer finance leadership to make strategic decisions based on data.
• Work closely with the Commercial teams in the field, mainly Regional Managers, Regional Trainers & Territory Leads, sharing insights on the credit performance of their regions, acting as a strategic support partner for them in order to improve their credit metrics through enhanced field operations and routines.

Field Team Day-to-Day Capacity, Performance Management & Support – 50%

• Directly Manage the Fraud and Repossession coordinator making sure that these sensible operations are being adequately supervised and monitored
• Coordinate weekly team call with Regional Trainers and Regional Managers to identify actions and help in prioritization, activity planning, support on resources required, and to review actions of prior week and results
• Communication to field teams
• Coordination of weekly collection drives with the Regional Trainers
• Troubleshooting & escalation of issues
• Classroom & on-the-job training
• Support on recruitment & onboarding
• Support Commercial and CX to implement regular customer repayment promotions and internal repayment campaigns through communication to the field teams
• Support and mentor Regional Trainers in building a field team that is passionate about our mission and embodies EEA values, train, onboard and build capacity of the Commercial field team.
• Manage the team and day to day operations related to Customer Finance
• Mentor the team to continuously build their critical thinking and execution skills so that they can maximize their contributions to EEA and grow with the company

• Review & sign off the compensation / commissions prepared by the CF Data Analyst

Documentation & Stewardship of EEA Kenya Customer Finance Standards – 10%

• Ensure the Kenya credit escalation framework and all related documents are updated to the current strategy and standards and maintained as an accurate “live” reference document on SharePoint
• Ensure that all current field standards and processes are well documented, regularly updated, and made available to applicable team members for reference and development of training materials
• Help foster and encourage a “culture of credit”, understanding of and compliance to standards and performance management against credit KPIs amongst our customer facing teams

Continuous Improvement of Escalation Standards, Process & Workflow Design & Tools – 10%

• Lead the implementation of new standard processes, digital tools and workflows, getting buy-in from the implementing team and ensuring they have the right tools, resources and support to successfully roll out
• Get regular feedback and ideas from field teams to improve how we run our field operations and improve our processes and tools
• Identify pain points/areas for improvement in the overall credit escalation framework and standard processes and bring teams together to work on ideas/plans to address key pain points in the escalation path or key processes.
• Work with the Head of Customer Finance and the Head of Commercial to ensure our field compensation schemes are incentivizing the appropriate behavior we want to see reflected in the field and optimizing credit performance
• Support Field Team Digital Tools requirements gathering, improvement and optimization, identifying gaps in the current systems or areas for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of existing Field Operations processes.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Management – 10%

• Collaborate closely with the call center and field teams to ensure coordination of activities related to the credit cycle, the credit escalation framework and the overall customer journey
• Attend commercial performance review and strategy meetings to ensure close and constant collaboration with Commercial teams
• Collaborate with other EEA market teams & EEA Global team to leverage best practices from EEA Kenya, implement best practices from the EEA network and brainstorm solutions to common challenges.
• Work with the various stakeholders – CX, Product, Ops & Commercial at both the country and global level to support business deliverables and to coordinate on shared processes, standards, etc.

Required Skills & Experience

• Minimum University degree in Economics, Banking, Finance, Accounting, or related field
• 4+ years’ work experience in a similar role coordinating, supporting or managing field team activities, particularly in sectors like credit collections, retail financial services, or other related fields.
• Strong interpersonal skills with high degree of clarity in communication
• Strong analytical and data skills and ability to use data to drive insights and performance results
• Experience in delivering training to large groups; designing the material, coordinating the participants and venue, facilitating the session, and following up with the participants for assessment is a plus
• Ability to generate new ideas and bring them through to implementation in a structured way
• Deep empathy for the customer and commitment to inclusivity, consumer protection, & responsible financial services within the context of creating a profitable, scalable enterprise
• Excitement about ENGIE’s mission and a deep desire to make an impact on off-grid and financially underserved customers in sub-Saharan Africa
• Commitment to spending time in the field to support and mentoring field teams
• Experience in working directly with commission-based field agents will be an advantage

Language(s): 

• English
• Kiswahili

Technology:

• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Experience using data analysis tools e.g. Excel, SQL, Python/R etc. To analyze processes/ performance and make suggestions & improvements is a big plus
• Experience working with Loan Management Systems, ticket management systems, and mobile applications in support of management of the credit cycle and general collections and recoveries is a plus
• Being tech-savvy and a fast learner of new technical tools is a must

We thank all applicants for their interest, however due to the large volume of applications we receive, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

ENGIE is an equal opportunity employer, promoting diversity and committed to creating an inclusive environment for all. All applications are screened based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without any regard to origin, age, name, sexual identity, orientation or preference, religion, marital status, health, disability, political opinions, union involvement or citizenship. Our differences are our strengths!