Chief Risk Officer (CRO)

About Billd

Billd is a fast-growing fintech company looking to disrupt a $1.4 trillion dollar industry. We offer industry-leading financial and technology products to empower our customers. We believe in championing the underdog because no one else does.

We're equally committed to the motivated professionals that make up the Billd family. We are proud to have been recognized as Austin's fastest-growing private company by Austin Business Journal, and one of the best to work for by Built In. As a rapidly growing company, there are numerous opportunities for internal growth and career development.

You will be challenged to be your best self and guaranteed to have one of the most professionally rewarding experiences of your career. We encourage creativity, initiative, collaboration, playfulness, and a strong work-life balance.

We call our beautiful campus, located in Austin, TX, home and have a hybrid work model that allows employees the flexibility to work from home one day per week.

The Role

This is an opportunity for someone to have an immediate and valuable impact on the near and long-term future of the business. This individual will be responsible for providing effective oversight of the company's enterprise credit and risk management; developing and implementing the risk assessment framework; management of credit policy; developing and improving credit decisioning frameworks and algorithms; leading and negotiating credit facility negotiations; ensuring the company operates within manageable limits; and leading, both directly and indirectly, groups of people within multiple functions relating to risk and credit management. This person will be responsible for standing up core underwriting and credit operations policy/process/workflows while also managing the underwriting team.

The Chief Risk Officer (Chief Lending Officer) will serve as the company's credit leader with responsibility for developing and leading a credit risk strategy that will facilitate ambitious growth, while still maintaining an appropriate level of quality for the portfolio. In addition to developing all of the required frameworks, models and policies and evaluating transactions, s/he will be a key strategic partner to executive management in developing and implementing the growth strategy of the business.

What You'll Do

• Lead credit strategy and optimization
• Drive integrated decision-making across the lending lifecycle to deliver goals related to revenue, losses, return on assets, collections and approval rates.
• Oversee the daily operation of account and project underwriting, credit decisioning, compliance, and collections.
• Expand third-party data acquisition that feeds to credit decisioning models such as credit bureaus and other third-party data providers
• Lead underwriting policy including approval/decline, initial credit line assignment, pricing, and other secondary terms.
• Support collections and recoveries strategy, including contact strategy, tools, channels, insource/outsource, etc.
• Influence customer acquisition strategies from a credit perspective across the various marketing channels. Partner with business development and direct marketing to drive high-quality leads to the lending business, recommending changes in incentive and bounty strategies as needed.
• Work directly with company investors to update on credit policy changes including the evolution of credit algorithm, target vs. actual default and delinquency rate, and industry trends that affect credit decisioning
• Develop decision-making structure, criteria, and protocols that emphasize balanced risk and return outcomes. Define and implement the scope of authority at various levels.
  Influence the organization on how to prioritize and evaluate initiatives on a profitability basis.
• Define and build the credit infrastructure needed to effectively manage, grow and optimize the business
• Develop, implement and enforce company Credit Policy, which includes credit algorithm, automated decisioning, individual applicant/project underwriting process, credit limit determination methodology, delinquency and default workflows, and collection process
• Define KPIs for the business, set targets against them, and develop reporting and infrastructure to measure and monitor their performance vs expectations.
• Develop performance thresholds and feedback cycles to identify early trends and drive continuous improvement.
• Define risk appetite and target returns for the business. Ensure the business can meet those targets under various scenarios.
• Identify emerging trends, risks, and marketplace developments, and develop recommendations to respond accordingly.
• Develop accurate forecasting and planning tools that enable the business to predict future growth and performance, as well as identify key requirements to enable that growth.
• Lead all portfolio reporting required by investor and debt providers.
• Determine the ideal organizational and talent structure to achieve success for the department.

Skills and Qualifications

• 10+ years in commercial or consumer lending, credit risk analytics, and risk management with financial institutions including the development of credit policy, underwriting standards, and internal risk scoring
• Exposure to many or all segments of the lending lifecycle (acquisitions, underwriting, product development, customer management, collections, recoveries, and fraud).
• Experience in developing credit policy and credit algorithms with B2B lending
• Deep expertise in credit performance and dynamics, grounded in through-the-economic-cycle experience and insights.
• Experience in developing monitoring and reporting that enables efficient tracking and managing of lending portfolios
• Experience managing and leading - at a granular level - credit facility negotiations
• Track record of creative thinking and approaches to drive incremental and step changes in value generation.
• Ability to influence across multiple functional areas to support decision-making and spending.
• Experience in the construction industry is preferred but not required
• Formative experience at an organization with a strong analytical culture.
• Bachelor's degree required; master's degree preferred in a quantitative discipline.

Billd is committed to diversity and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.