Head of Credit Risk

Chexy

• $125K — $150K *
Finance & Insurance
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 8+ years in consumer credit risk, specifically with unsecured revolving products.
  • Canadian experience with Equifax and TransUnion data; knowledge of provincial credit and collections rules.
  • Proficient in SQL and Python for data analysis and reporting.
  • Experience in setting cutoffs and line strategies, adjusting based on outcomes.
  • History of building or changing a loss forecast with accountability for results.
  • Comfortable presenting and defending numbers to boards or credit committees.
  • Exposure to collections and fraud strategies in credit decisions.
  • Builder mindset from experience in startups or environments lacking infrastructure.

Responsibilities

  • Develop the credit policy encompassing eligibility, verification, and governance.
  • Establish and refine the credit box using both bureau and proprietary data.
  • Design line management strategies for origination and adjustments thereafter.
  • Create loss forecasts and oversee monitoring mechanisms pre-launch.
  • Implement the collections strategy operationally before needing it.
  • Define and manage fraud prevention strategies in collaboration with other teams.
  • Conduct governance and reporting to ensure adherence to regulations and standards.

Benefits

  • Opportunity to build a credit function from the ground up with personal decision-making authority.
  • Access unique data for underwriting; years of bill-payment and cash-flow history.
  • Collaborate closely with company founders and be involved in major strategic decisions.
  • Significant equity opportunities as part of the early team in a critical role.
  • Work in a dynamic Toronto office environment, five days a week.
Full Job Description
Description

Description

About the role

Chexy is launching its first credit product in early 2027, and we're looking for a Head of Credit Risk to build the credit function from the ground up and own it.

This is not an oversight role, and it is not a job where you review decisions other people make. You will make the decisions, and you will do the work.

You'll write our first credit policy, set the credit box, design line assignment and line management, build the loss forecast, stand up collections, and own the monitoring that tells us whether it's working. You'll pull your own data, build the first scorecards yourself, and be the accountable name on our loss number to our credit committee, our capital partners, and our board.

You'll report to our co-founder and CEO and work alongside a seasoned credit advisor who chairs our credit committee. You'll have real support and real independence: credit decisions are yours, and nobody in growth or product gets to move the cutoffs.

We care about judgment, speed and rigour. You should be equally comfortable writing a policy document, building a line assignment matrix in Python, walking a lender through your loss curve, and deciding on a Tuesday afternoon what to do about a segment that's underperforming.

The outcome

Launch a credit product in early 2027 with a credit function our board, capital partners and regulators trust, and a portfolio that performs to plan.

What you'll own

Credit policy and underwriting
  • Write the credit policy: eligibility, verification, decisioning, exceptions, governance
  • Set and tune the credit box using bureau data and, over time, our proprietary payment and cash-flow data
  • Select and configure the decision engine and own the bureau relationships (Equifax and TransUnion)
  • Design and run the pre-launch bureau retro study and the test-and-learn roadmap after launch


Line management
  • Design line assignment at origination and the line increase and decrease strategy after it
  • Balance customer need against exposure and funding cost, and measure revenue per dollar of line


Portfolio performance and loss forecasting
  • Build the loss forecast and own it against actuals
  • Build vintage, delinquency, roll-rate and utilization monitoring before the first account is booked
  • Own loss provisioning with Finance


Collections and recoveries
  • Stand up collections from scratch: strategy, timing, channels, agency selection, provincial rules
  • Have it operational before the first delinquency, not after


Fraud
  • Own credit-adjacent fraud strategy: application fraud, first-party fraud, account takeover
  • Partner with our payments risk and engineering teams on tooling and signals


Governance and reporting
  • Run the credit committee pack and present the book monthly
  • Own credit reporting to capital partners, including eligibility criteria and covenant metrics, with Finance
  • Own credit bureau reporting and, with counsel and compliance, our adherence to provincial consumer credit and collections rules
  • Build the function in a way you'd be comfortable describing to a regulator


What success looks like
  • We launch on time with a credit policy our credit committee, capital partners and board have approved.
  • Monitoring exists before the first account, collections is ready before the first missed payment, and bureau reporting is accurate from day one.
  • In the first 90 days, approval rates, line strategy and early delinquency are reviewed weekly and the credit box is tuned on evidence, not opinion.
  • Losses land within plan, and when a segment drifts, we know within days and act within a week.
  • By the end of year one, our proprietary payment and cash-flow data is a documented input to underwriting, not a hypothesis.
  • The function has a documented governance cycle, a first hire under you, and could withstand a regulator's questions.


What we're looking for
  • 8+ years in consumer credit risk, with time spent personally owning underwriting policy and loss outcomes for an unsecured revolving product
  • Canadian credit experience: Equifax and TransUnion Canada data, provincial consumer credit and collections rules, bureau reporting
  • Hands-on SQL and Python. You still pull your own data and will for the next 18 months
  • You have set cutoffs and line strategies, watched the outcomes, and changed your mind based on them
  • You have built or materially changed a loss forecast and been held to it
  • Comfortable presenting to a board, a credit committee or a capital partner, and defending a number under questioning
  • Exposure to collections strategy and fraud strategy, not just acquisitions
  • Builder mindset: you've worked where the infrastructure didn't exist yet, or you've wanted to
  • Startup or fintech lending experience is a plus, not a requirement. So is having lived through a credit cycle as a decision-maker


This probably isn't the role for you if
  • You need a team of analysts to function
  • You prefer overseeing credit decisions to making them
  • You want a second-line role reviewing other people's policy
  • You think launch-stage credit is a modelling problem rather than a judgment problem
  • You'd rather not be the accountable name on the loss number


Why Join Chexy?

Build a credit function from zero: Set policy for a portfolio from the first account, with decisions that are actually yours

Underwrite with data most issuers don't have: Years of bill-payment history and cash-flow data on hundreds of thousands of Canadians

Join a tight-knit team: Work directly with the founders, with a seat at the table on the biggest bet the company is making

Significant equity: Comp sized for someone building a core function this early, with real upside

Toronto office: We work in-office 5 days a week

How We Hire

We keep our hiring process clear and human. You'll go through a mix of conversational interviews and a practical case: we'll give you a slice of data and ask you to define a launch credit box, a line assignment approach and a first-year loss estimate, then talk it through with us. We'll also ask to read a policy document you've written.

We use AI tools to help us organize and review applications; every decision about who we interview and who we hire is made by a person. This posting is for an existing vacancy. If you interview with us, we'll let you know within days of your last interview whether a decision has been made.

Know someone who would be a perfect fit? Let them know!

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