Head of Underwriting

About Us

YouLend is a rapidly growing FinTech that is the preferred embedded financing platform for many of the world's leading e-commerce platforms, tech companies, and Payment Service Providers. Our software platform enables our partners to extend their value proposition by offering flexible financing products in their own branding, to their merchant base, without capital at risk. We are owned by the leading Private Equity company, EQT, and have grown +100% year-on-year since 2020.

We operate in more than 10 countries with offices in Atlanta (US), London (UK), Berline (DE) servicing our partners, including eBay, Amazon, GrubHub, Shopify, and Stripe.

The Role

YouLend is hiring a risk-first Head of Underwriting to lead our US underwriting function. The underwriting team is a core part of the YouLend Production Line and is responsible for approving and declining financing applications, deciding appropriate exposure limits, and pricing deals.

In this senior leadership role, you will take full ownership of scaling and managing the underwriting team based in our Atlanta office (25+ people expected within 12 months), while also developing and shaping the US risk strategy to enhance our underwriting processes and capabilities.

Your primary objective is to ensure that customers are served well (as measured through speed and quality of decisioning financing applications), whilst achieving high approval rates and low loss rates. You and your Team Leaders will be responsible for hiring, training and developing current and prospective team members to meet business objectives. While operational excellence is crucial to your success, your role is targeted at enhancing our underwriting process and capabilities to optimise YouLend's returns in US - often in cross-team collaboration with the global Credit Risk, Capital Markets and Product teams. You will establish yourself as a trusted leader, balancing growth with risk-adjusted returns (not just approvals). You will be expected to play an active role in our Credit Committees, monitor performance of YouLend's portfolio, and use data to proactively identify and

propose improvements to our underwriting capabilities and tools.

Requirements

Responsibilities:

• · Be at the forefront of building an independent underwriting function in US, balancing growth with risk-adjusted returns (not just approvals) - bridging market standards with the best of YouLend
• · This includes developing Team Leaders who can support you in the day-to- day management of the underwriting team (25+ people expected within 12 months)
• · Play an active role in Credit Committee, acting as a trusted expert in your field
• · Own end-to-end performance: Manage the implementation of global Credit Risk guidance, analyzing bottlenecks and delivering strategies to increase adoption
• · Collaborate with cross-functional teams (e.g. Credit Risk, Compliance, Capital Markets, Product and Commercial) to continuously optimize underwriting tools, processes, and policies. Use data to proactively identify, propose and execute solutions to bridge policy gaps and adjust Credit Risk models, aimed at improving efficiency or returns
• · Establish quality control measures to maintain high standards of accuracy and consistency across teams, including regular audits to verify adherence to internal policies and processes
• · Hire and develop managers and individual underwriters alike, cemented in scalable training infrastructure
• · Help take new products, partners, and markets from zero to one with the appropriate conversion-risk trade-off
• · Act as a change leader, implementing improvements quickly and effectively and embedding them sustainably within the teams — with minimal disruption to day-to-day operations

The ideal candidate will have the following skillset:

• · 3+ years' direct experience with underwriting or risk. Ideally, working as a senior stakeholder in a growing FinTech company, in the financial services sector or at a bank
• · A strong understanding of credit risk across the US, coupled with a commercial mindset
• · A strong track-record of managing people (ideally 10+) and mentoring your direct reports. Ideally, you also have experience in managing managers
• · Hands-on mentality: You are proactive, act with urgency, drive projects forward, remove obstacles, and consistently implement solutions
• · You take responsibility for outcomes, not tasks, and drive projects to completion without supervision
• · You are data-driven, comfortable in numbers, and able to make decisions with imperfect information
• · Successful track-record of achieving ambitious goals
• · Strong change management skills and exp