Manager - Credit & Repayment Operations

Job description

**About Apollo:** Apollo Agriculture is a leading agri-fintech platform empowering small-scale farmers across Africa to increase their profits and farm more sustainably. Apollo uses artificial intelligence and automated operations to unlock the massive, untapped small-scale farming market. Apollo enables farmers to access the optimized financing, high-quality farm products, expert digital advice, and risk management solutions they need to invest and scale their businesses. Apollo grew paying customers over [2.5x](http://2.5x) in 2023 to over 200K small-scale farmers in Kenya and Zambia, increasing revenue to nearly $30M with robust unit economics. Apollo partners with key global agriculture companies like Bayer, OCP and Yara, and is backed by Anthemis, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Flourish Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, and Softbank Vision Fund. Apollo’s team brings together technology, credit and operations experience from The Climate Corporation, Google, Capital One, Revolut, and One Acre Fund. **About the Role** This role combines strategic leadership, operational execution, and customer focus. You will be accountable for collections and repayment performance, leading a diverse team spanning field, call center, and repayment associates, while collaborating closely with commercial, product, and credit operations teams to ensure growth and repayment work hand-in-hand. Not only are you a leader, you are a doer who rolls up your sleeves to deliver results. You are also a builder of systems and processes, comfortable improving and refining what you find, and thrive in the field where experience is non-negotiable. This is a growth opportunity for someone already doing similar work who is ready to expand their impact and take ownership of a larger portfolio. ### Responsibilities: - **Repayment Strategy & Execution** - Contribute to the development of operational repayment strategies in close collaboration with the Credit Leadership team, and take ownership of executing these strategies to ensure alignment with company objectives. - Provide hands-on guidance to the repayment operations team, focusing on execution to deliver strong performance and seamless repayment and collection processes. - Continuously improve repayment and collection rates, operational efficiency, and cost-effectiveness through hands-on execution. - **Cross-Functional Alignment & Leadership Engagement** - Act as the primary liaison between Credit Ops, Commercial, and Product. - Represent repayment performance and strategy in senior leadership forums, ensuring alignment with business priorities. - **Customer-Centric Collections Execution** - Champion a customer-first approach across all repayment channels (field and call center), ensuring that collections practices are empathetic, respectful, and solutions-oriented. - Embed Quality Assurance (QA), coaching, and clear policies that guide repayment teams to deliver constructive, customer-centric conversations while meeting repayment performance standards. - **Team Development & Performance Management** - Build, maintain, and continuously improve a high-performing repayment operations team spanning the field, call center, and repayment associates. - Lead recruitment, onboarding, mentoring, and training to foster ownership, accountability, and professional growth. - Track team and individual performance regularly, providing constructive feedback, coaching, and mentorship to drive growth while recognizing achievements and celebrating success. - Create a culture of performance and improvement that drives sustained delivery on repayment goals. - **Compliance & Risk Management** - Ensure all repayment activities strictly adhere to company policies, industry regulations, and best practices. - Embed robust controls, coaching, and QA processes to uphold the highest compliance and quality standards across repayment teams. - **Cost & Budget Management** - Manage the credit and repayment-related costs and budgets, ensuring efficient use of resources without compromising on quality or performance. - Identify cost-saving opportunities while safeguarding customer experience. - **Insights, Data & Risk Management** - Use data and field insights to refine repayment strategies and flag risks early. - Partner with analytics teams to strengthen dashboards and decision-making tools. - Collaborate with fraud teams to detect, escalate, and resolve fraud cases. - **Process Innovation & Digitization** - Continuously improve repayment systems and processes, including digital tools, automation, and field innovations. - **Hands-On Leadership & System Building** - Not only are you a leader, you are a doer. You roll up your sleeves to support execution while building and refining the systems, processes, and structures needed for repayment success. You set the tone for accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement across teams. ### Requirements: - Bachelor’s degree from a recognized institution, preferably in Business, Finance, Economics, or a related field. - 5-8 years of experience in repayment operations, collections, or a related field - Proven ability to lead, motivate, and develop high-performing teams. - Demonstrated ability to define, execute, and adapt repayment strategies in alignment with business goals. - Strong analytical skills to interpret data, generate insights, and drive decision-making. - Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to engage effectively across levels and functions. - Knowledge of budgeting, cost management, and financial targets. - Familiarity with compliance requirements and experience in identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks. - Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment and adjust strategies as needed. - Customer-centric mindset with a focus on balancing repayment performance and positive customer experiences. - Proactive, gritty, and resourceful, able to balance strategy with execution and thrive in dynamic, field-driven environments. - SQL knowledge is an added advantage. ### We: - Are a collaborative team of smart and ambitious people who are dedicated to serving our customers. - Make magic happen to solve hard problems and always come with solutions when challenges arise. - Are comfortable taking risks that can result in radical scale, and understand that failures are opportunities to learn and improve. - Are considerate listeners and take the time to deeply understand and seek out ideas from the people around us, even when we disagree. - Offer a dynamic environment that fosters talent, collaboration, and growth. - Take pride in our work and share the responsibility to see it through from conception to deployment. - Back up our talk with a competitive compensation and benefits package and challenging projects. - Value autonomy, honesty, transparency, and respect. - Are excited to hear from you!