The purpose of this job is to execute risk and credit operations on assigned transactions in alignment with established frameworks and processes, ensuring effective and efficient loan underwriting across ABHFL service offerings for sound portfolio quality management. This role is expected to take approval decisions as per approval matrix after due creditworthiness and risk assessment ensuring process adherence, and coordinate with Sales, Operations and Technical team colleagues to ensure robust risk management operations.
Organizational Context
Key Aspects:
Part of the Aditya Birla Financial Service Group (ABFSG), Aditya Birla Housing Finance Limited (ABHFL) is registered with the National Housing Bank as a housing finance company under the National Housing Bank Act, 1987. The company offers a complete range of housing finance solutions such as home loans, home improvement and home construction loans, balance transfer and top-up loans, loans against property and construction finance. The company acquired its license on 9th July 2014 and has aggressive growth plans.
ABHFL operates in the Rs. 11.4 trillion Indian Housing Finance market, which has grown at a steady rate of 17% CAGR over the last 3 years while reporting good asset quality despite challenges in the operating environment. While the industry is dominated by five large groups, there has been an emergence of newer entrants in niche segments like affordable housing and self-employed borrowers, given the high potential in these segments. Despite increased focus by banks, HFCs have been able to maintain their share in the mortgage market and has remained stable at ~37% as on December 2015.
Job Context
Key Aspects:
The Risk team provides core underwriting services fundamental to the ABHFL business health, risk management and sustainability. Structured as a dual to the Sales/ Sourcing team, with positions mapped against corresponding Sales roles across the organization, the Risk team is responsible for necessary controls and process checks to ensure business performance and health.
While the core responsibility for this function is to control the business via robust underwriting and risk management, supporting business expansion via joint evaluation of different product/ market growth proposals with the Sales team is also an important contribution.
The Head-Risk plays a vital role in securing the organization against diverse risks in the course of business operations. This role is responsible for setting up requisite underwriting and risk management frameworks and processes for robust and efficient creditworthiness and risk assessment, and consequent inputs for business decisions (loan approval/ rejection, business expansion, etc.)
Key Challenges:
While the ABFL Mortgages team also works with retail customers in the property space, the ABHFL business is exposed to the additional Construction Risk, i.e. risk from under construction projects not getting completed as planned. The Risk Team must factor for this when designing and executing control mechanisms and evaluating business proposals.
ABHFL is in its inception phase as a company and in the midst of rapid growth. The Risk function must therefore be able to balance priorities of risk management and business growth efficiently, without increasing sub-prime exposures or impacting business health and sustainability.
The housing space is characterized by state-wise norms and business practices, as well as varied interpretations of regulatory guidelines by different stakeholders. It is therefore essential for the Risk function to remain up to date on business practices/ norms across the country and work within regulatory guidelines in a manner that minimizes business risk and also supports growth objectives.
Enabling Skill Sets & Qualifications
Critical skill sets required to meet these challenges include strong business and commercial acumen, analytical skills, good stakeholder management and presentation skills, and team management and execution capabilities.
Education & experience required to fulfil this profile are a CA/ MBA-Finance with minimum 4-7 yrs of experience in a bank/ NBFC/ HFC, of which at least recent 2- 3 yrs experience should be in managing risk and underwriting in an HFC.
KRA (Accountabilities) (Max 1325 Characters)
Supporting Actions (Max 1325 Characters)
KRA1
Underwriting and Portfolio Quality Management
Execute risk and credit operations for assigned transactions in adherence with defined frameworks and principles across ABHFL business lines
Evaluate and approve proposals as per defined approval matrix, seeking guidance from seniors and assisting peers on specific cases as required
Liaise with relevant Legal, Technical and other verification vendors for Legal-Technical evaluations and clarifications in complex cases, as required
Monitor the bounce rates as per threshold limits.
KRA2
Process Efficiency
Execute risk operations efficiently and in a manner that enables business performance while ensuring risk management imperatives
Coordinate seamlessly with Credit Processing Analysts and Credit Analysts to ensure files are logged appropriately and analyzed thoroughly
Work as per process-driven coordination mechanisms with Sales and Operations teams for effective decision making and problem solving in line with business and risk management needs; escalate to RCM as required
Effectively managing external vendors to ensure quality of reports & TAT
Efficiently track Cost and ensure they are within budgeted levels.
Ensure accurate data capture in LOS and maintain high quality of documentation.
Ensure collection of Post disbursal documents within assigned time frame.
KRA3
Risk Compliance & Control
Ensure compliance with established risk management principles and norms; compile periodic and need based MIS, reports, escalation case documents, etc.
Conduct local risk operations in line with defined Maker-Checker mechanism with Sales and Operations teams in a systematic manner, across key aspects such as exception approvals, collateral valuation, PDD completion, cheque bounce collections, etc.
Ensure minimal critical observations in Audit and also to ensure all observations are resolved within specified TATs.
KRA4
Collection Efficiency
Work in alignment with process-driven mechanisms for coordination with the Collections/ Operations team on tracking delinquency cases and driving collections efficiently and effectively
Escalate specific/ complex cases, as required, to RCM for recovery and delinquency/ NPA avoidance
Monitoring of delinquent portfolios. Liaison with key delinquent customers and support collections team for resolutions of all cases
Report fraud cases to Risk monitoring team and Regional/Zonal Risk Head.
KRA5
Business Growth and Sustainability
Work in partnership with Sales and Operations colleagues on case-based decision making for effective support on business growth and sustainability
KRA6
Self-Development & Internal Stakeholder Coordination
Seek development to execute better risk assessment and loan underwriting via technical skill-up (e.g. proficiency on legal & technical documents, property business practices & norms, etc.) and role clarity
Maintain relationships with internal stakeholders for smooth coordination on complex/ escalation/ exception cases
