Collections Team Manager

Role Overview

This position involves supervising and directing team leaders tasked with managing delinquent accounts, ensuring efficient recovery processes, and maintaining high-quality communication standards. The manager will also handle complex cases, optimize collection strategies aligning with portfolio risk reduction, and enforce strict compliance with ethical and regulatory guidelines governing debt collection.

Key Responsibilities

• Assign and manage daily and weekly work plans for team leaders including allocation of delinquent accounts.
• Conduct morning briefings and evening debrief sessions to evaluate team performance, focusing on call quality and message follow-ups.
• Monitor recovery metrics such as connection rates, promise to pay completions, and volume of follow-ups, which also serve as a basis for commission calculations.
• Manage disciplinary matters, attendance, conflict resolution, and performance feedback to optimize team effectiveness.
• Design collection strategies based on delinquency buckets (from current up to 30+ days overdue) to improve recovery ratios and reduce portfolio risk.
• Handle escalated cases that require negotiation for installment plans, payment deferments, or debt settlements.
• Reconcile payment records daily, ensure accurate logging of communication and promises made by customers.
• Analyze reasons for loss of contact and report market risks to management, suggesting approach improvements.
• Enforce policies preventing harassment, intimidation, public shaming, verbal abuse, and excessive calling frequency.
• Respond to collection-related customer complaints within 48 hours and mediate issues to avoid escalations to regulatory bodies.
• Maintain knowledge of Credit Reference Bureau reporting regulations.
• Prepare and submit timely reports on recovery data, complaints, lost-contact volumes, and KPI achievements.
• Gather and report local market insights and customer feedback to enhance collection tactics.
• Create, maintain, and refine locally applicable Standard Operating Procedures and communication scripts for debt collection.
• Perform other collection-related duties as assigned.

Candidate Requirements

• Minimum of 3 to 5 years’ experience in credit or automobile loan collection operations within Kenya.
• At least 1 year experience managing a collections team.
• Fluency in both English and Swahili with strong negotiation capabilities.
• Thorough understanding of Kenyan Central Bank debt collection regulations and complaint handling.
• Competence interpreting delinquency data and proficient in Microsoft Excel and Word.
• Knowledge of field collection environments in Nairobi and surrounding regions is advantageous.
• Strong ethical standards, a results-driven approach, and commitment to team compliance with operational procedures.