VP, Collections & Recovery Strategy Oversight (L12)

Job Description:

Role Title: VP, Collections & Recovery Strategy Oversight

Company Overview:

Synchrony (NYSE: SYF) is a premier consumer financial services company delivering one of the industry’s most complete digitally enabled product suites. Our experience, expertise and scale encompass a broad spectrum of industries including digital, health and wellness, retail, telecommunications, home, auto, outdoors, pet and more.

• We have recently been ranked #2 among India’s Best Companies to Work for 2024, #21 under LinkedIn Top Companies in India list, and received Top 25 BFSI recognition from Great Place To Work India. We have been ranked Top 5 among India’s Best Workplaces in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Top 10 among India’s Best Workplaces for Women in 2022.
• We offer 100% Work from Home flexibility for all our Functional employees and provide some of the best-in-class Employee Benefits and Programs catering to work-life balance and overall well-being. In addition to this, we also have Regional Engagement Hubs across India and a co-working space in Bangalore.

Organizational Overview:

Synchrony's Risk Team provides independent oversight of Synchrony’s risk-taking activities to ensure safety and soundness, meet regulatory and legal requirements, and manage risks to the risk-appetite of the Board. Risk is responsible for independently assessing, quantifying, and overseeing risks & providing effective challenge. Risk serves as Synchrony’s Second Line of Defense.   

Overall, Risk Team oversees and manages the Risk Program to support the business in anticipating and addressing risks, issues and challenges. Results are consistent with the respective strategic uses and complying with related overall risk, risk testing policies, standards, procedures as well as regulations. Our Risk organization consists of 4 pillars: Compliance, Credit & Financial Risk, Enterprise Risk and Operational Risk. Each of the pillars play a vital role in managing Risk and supports the business in anticipating and addressing risks, issues, and challenges.
Enterprise Risk provides oversight on Synchrony-wide initiatives and projects and manages issues, risk assessment & reporting, risk monitoring activities, policy standards and procedure framework for governance documents.

We’re proud to offer you choice and flexibility. You have the option to be remote, and work from home, or come into one of our offices. You may be occasionally requested to commute to our nearest office for in person engagement activities such as team meetings, training and culture events.

Role Summary/Purpose:

The VP, Collections & Recovery Strategy Oversight is primarily responsible for leading the cyclical validation of existing Collection & Recovery strategies (including the evaluation of Non-model Tools (NMTs) that provide an input into the strategies) and the concurrent assessment of new Collection & Recovery strategy proposals and changes to existing strategies. The secondary responsibilities include driving the CSV team’s understanding of new collection & recovery tools/models and their impact on strategies.  The role will report directly to India Risk Leader (Namita Kathuria) with a dotted line of reporting to the VP - Credit Strategy Validation Leader within the Credit Risk Management Oversight organization.

Key Responsibilities:

• Perform independent validations of existing Collection & Recovery strategies per the annual Credit Strategy Validation (CSV) plan to gauge efficaciousness of criteria and performance of champion/challenger strategies where applicable, compare expected versus actual results, confirm proper implementation, accuracy/completeness of existing documentation and appropriateness of strategy monitoring. 

• Leverage advanced technical expertise to translate documentation of Collection & Recovery strategy criteria into SAS code (or other coding language as needed) to complete the validation.

• Liaise with first line stakeholders across the Collections and Recovery Strategy Development / Implementation teams (and Credit and Operations when necessary) to understand and evaluate respective strategies, processes and procedures within scope of validation.

• Document results of validations to produce detailed ‘white paper’ reports that will ultimately be shared with first, second, and third line stakeholders, regulators and Senior Leadership and be leveraged to drive quality improvement opportunities across reviewable strategies.

• Lead validation results meetings by effectively communicating issues and recommendations to Collection & Recovery Strategy leadership teams, solicit feedback prior to final report publication.  Maintain timelines and feedback loop with respective strategy teams to ensure all applicable issues in eGRC system are mitigated as per the chosen timeline.

• Lead two direct reports who will assist in Collections & Recovery Oversight activities.

• Provide thought leadership for Risk India wide projects, external conferences, offsite agenda and promote mentorship, upskilling and growth.

• Participate in the independent assessment of new Collections & Recovery strategy proposals as well as requests to modify existing strategies as part of SYF Collections Working Group and provide effective challenge and insights while communicating material risks.

• As needed, draft credit risk assessment memos, including the bi-annual Debt Sales NPV Analysis, to effectively communicate the CSV opinion of Collections & Recovery activities and strategy proposals needing approval at the Credit Sub-Committee (CSC).

• Act as delegate for CSV Leader at Working Groups and/or CSC as non-voting member on as-needed basis.

• Lead and perform Collections & Recovery NMT testing/validation, working closely with NMT Oversight Leader to ensure completion within appropriate risk-based cyclical/planned timeframes and at times working across the broader CFRM organization for surge assistance as required.

• Assist broader CSV team with the  maintenance of PORAS (Perpetual Oversight Risk Automation Suite), including coding/insertion of completed collection strategy validations into the automation platform (where appropriate) and subsequent investigation of alerts if triggered. 

• Where applicable, perform ad-hoc or deep-dive analyses to better understand the materiality of concern with regards to new strategy proposals or modifications.

• Drive the CSV team’s understanding of new collection & recovery tools/models and their impact on strategies.

• Coordinate governance-related activities specific to Collections & Recovery Strategy Oversight with broader CSV team, including inputs into procedure, job aid, RAQ, PRC, eGRC Master Schedule and strategy validation tracker; assist with inputs into quarterly reporting update with regulators; input to CSV Governance and Advanced Analytics meetings.

• Work with other Risk functions across the second line of defense, including Model Development & Governance, Operational Risk, Risk Testing and Compliance to increase awareness of validation results, create synergies and avoid redundancies.

• Perform other duties and/or special projects as assigned.

Required Skills/Knowledge:

• Bachelor’s Degree and 10+ years’ experience in a consumer credit/risk analytics role;  OR, in lieu of Bachelor’s degree, 12+ years’ experience in consumer credit/risk analytics role.

• 10+ years’ experience with SAS/SQL or other transferable logic-based programming.

• Experience working with Decision Trees and other statistical tools.

• Strong oral and written communication skills with impact and influence.

• Strong understanding of the consumer credit lending lifecycle and card programs.

Desired Skills/Knowledge:

• Bachelor’s Degree in a science, technology, engineering and mathematics related or Business field

• MBA or Master’s degree in a science, technology, engineering and mathematics field.

• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects, organize workflow, and prioritize work assignments.

• Advanced reasoning skills in conjunction with an intimate understanding of how our strategy systems work and how their outflows tie into the data warehouse.

• Elevated aptitude in deciphering and interpreting strategy documentation and criteria and the ability to translate that into independently created logic.

• Exposure to R, Python and Machine Learning tools.

• Commercially effective and collaborative across teams and functions.

• Intermediate EXCEL skill-set

Eligibility Criteria:

Bachelor’s Degree and 10+ years’ experience in a consumer credit/risk analytics role;  OR, in lieu of Bachelor’s degree, 12+ years’ experience in consumer credit/risk analytics role.
 

Work Timings: This role qualifies for Enhanced Flexibility and Choice offered in Synchrony India and will require the incumbent to be available between 06:00 AM Eastern Time – 11:30 AM Eastern Time (timings are anchored to US Eastern hours and will adjust twice a year locally). This window is for meetings with India and US teams. The remaining hours will be flexible for the employee to choose. Exceptions may apply periodically due to business needs. Please discuss this with the hiring manager for more details. 

For Internal Applicants:

• Understand the criteria or mandatory skills required for the role, before applying

• Inform your manager and HRM before applying for any role on Workday

• Ensure that your professional profile is updated (fields such as education, prior experience, other skills) and it is mandatory to upload your updated resume (Word or PDF format)

• Must not be any corrective action plan (Formal/Final Formal, PIP)

• L10+ Employees who have completed 18 months in the organization and 12 months in current role and level are only eligible

• L10+ Employees can apply

Grade/Level: 12

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