Head of Credit Risk Oversight

📍Dublin | 💶 €121,000 - €163,000 + Incentive Awards tied to your performance + benefits | Hear from the team ✨

⭐ Our Risk team

Monzo is building a bank for Europe, and lending sits at the heart of that plan. The Head of Credit Risk Oversight is a senior risk leadership role in the Second Line of Defence (2nd LoD), shaping how Monzo Bank Europe lends as it scales across the continent. You'll join early enough to set the standard, and stay to see it grow with the portfolio. Roles like this don't come along often.

You'll lead the oversight of Monzo Bank Europe’s whole lending business. That means driving our Credit Risk Framework, defining the risk appetite, challenging and shaping our credit strategy, and overseeing how the business executes it within that appetite, right across the credit lifecycle. You'll spot the risks inthe portfolio before they show up in the numbers, so Monzo Bank Europe can grow fast and keep growing.

You'll also lead our credit risk analytics and measurement. You'll direct the development of our IFRS 9 expected credit loss models, make sure our impairment provisions hold up, and turn portfolio data into insight the business acts on. You'll do that with modern methods and technology, including artificial intelligence, and set the standard for how we use and control them.

This role reports to the Director of Credit Risk, Monzo Bank Europe.

The role you are applying for is a Controlled Function (CF-2) within the meaning of the Central Bank Reform Act, 2010. For this role, appointment will be conditional on Monzo being fully satisfied that the appointee meets the requirements as set out in the Fitness and Probity Standards 2018 issued by the Central Bank of Ireland. As a CF, the role holder will be subject to Conduct Standards under the Central Bank of Ireland Individual Accountability Framework and will be required to take reasonable steps to ensure that the relevant conduct standards are met.

🔑 You’ll play a key role by...

1. Credit Risk Framework and Appetite

• Developing, implementing and continuously improving our Credit Risk Framework in Europe, keeping it aligned to the entity's strategy.
• Formulating and overseeing the Credit Risk Appetite Statement and its limit structure, so lending growth stays inside agreed boundaries.
• Turning appetite into practical limits, triggers and escalation paths, and overseeing how the First Line of Defence (1st LoD) puts them into practice.
• Embedding group-wide credit risk frameworks locally, with clear escalation between global standards and local policy.

1. 2nd LoD oversight of credit risk activities

• Giving independent oversight and challenge across credit policy, underwriting and credit decisioning strategies, affordability, pricing, and collections and recovery.
• Issuing formal 2nd LoD opinions on new products, policy and strategy changes, and material lending decisions.
• Reviewing portfolio asset quality regularly, including performance trends, vintage analysis and emerging pockets of risk.
• Overseeing the adequacy assessment of IFRS 9 impairment provisions, and giving a clear 2nd LoD view on whether provisions are appropriate.

1. Credit risk measurement

• Leading the measurement of our credit risk end to end, from data and methodology through to the loss estimates we report.
• Owning the development and maintenance of the IFRS 9 expected credit loss models, including the PD, LGD, EAD and forward-looking information (FLI) inputs behind them.
• Setting the methodology for staging, significant increase in credit risk, macroeconomic scenarios and post-model adjustments.
• Keeping model documentation and evidence in good shape, and closing validation findings on time.
• Bringing advanced techniques and artificial intelligence into how we build and run these models, with the controls and transparency that come with them.
• Supplying credit risk parameters and expert input to capital, stress testing and financial planning work.

1. Monitoring, early warning and MI

• Building credit risk monitoring and early warning processes that spot problems early.
• Delivering high quality, timely credit risk management information and insight to senior internal and external stakeholders.
• Making the numbers tell a clear story, so people can make decisions quickly and confidently.

1. Committee governance and independent challenge

• Acting as Secretariat and Deputy Chair of the Credit Risk Oversight Committee, shaping agendas, tracking actions, and presenting 2nd LoD reports and opinions.
• Escalating credit risk appetite breaches and material risks promptly to the Executive Risk Committee and the Board Risk Committee.
• Giving clear, evidence-based challenge to 1st LoD credit, analytics and product teams, and to accountable executives.

1. Regulatory compliance and engagement

• Making sure credit risk management meets the legal and regulatory requirements of the markets we operate in, including Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) requirements, Irish and European Union law, and European Banking Authority (EBA) and European Central Bank (ECB) guidelines.
• Leading the 2nd LoD assessment of changing and new credit regulation.
• Supporting regulatory reporting and engagement, and supporting the Director of Credit Risk on executing their PCF-22 obligations.
• Acting as a key point of contact for the CBI, internal audit and external auditors on credit risk matters.

1. Leadership and stakeholder management

• Building the credit risk oversight function from the ground up. You'll start hands-on, then hire and lead a team as the business grows.
• Putting cutting-edge technology at the heart of how the function works from day one, including generative and agentic artificial intelligence, and making sure we control those tools as carefully as we control everything else.
• Balancing commercial ambition with rigorous risk boundaries, and helping the business grow safely.

🤩 We’d love to hear from you if…

• You have a degree in a quantitative or financial discipline, such as Economics, Econometrics, Statistics, Mathematics, Finance or Financial Engineering. Further qualifications like the CFA, FRM or PRM are a strong plus.
• You've led credit risk oversight or credit risk measurement in a retail bank, challenger bank or a top financial regulatory consulting practice, ideally in a regulated European Union entity.
• You know retail credit risk modelling inside out: PD, LGD, EAD, IFRS 9 staging and expected credit loss, affordability and forward-looking information.
• You've owned or independently challenged credit risk appetite, credit policy, underwriting and collections strategies, and you can tell a strong one from a weak one.
• You understand European regulation well, including EBA and ECB guidelines, IFRS 9, the CCD2 and GDPR, and how they apply day to day.
• You have proven experience in independent engagement with with internal and external auditors and supervisory authorities, preferably the CBI and/or ECB
• You're tech-fluent, with hands-on SQL and Python, and keen to use generative and agentic artificial intelligence to speed up risk work, with clear eyes on the controls that need to come with it.
• You give clear, structured, objective challenge to 1st LoD teams, and people listen because your evidence is strong.
• You've built credit risk frameworks, models or governance from scratch, including where data is sparse.
• You can turn complex analysis into simple, useful insight for senior management and the board.

🙌 What’s in it for you

💰 A salary range of €121,000 - €163,000 + Incentive Awards tied to your performance.

📍This role will have a hybrid working model, based in our Dublin office 2 - 3 days a week. You will also travel to Monzo’s head office in London from time to time.

⏰ We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, and at times that suit you and your team. 

🏝 Annual Leave - 34 days including public holidays (24 holiday days + 10 public holidays)

📚€1,200 learning budget each year to use on books, training courses and conferences.

🏥 Private healthcare scheme

💰Pension scheme: the minimum contribution is 4% and Monzo matches any additional contributions that you make up to a maximum of 6%

💛 Wellbeing benefits: financial education, women’s and men’s health support, mental health benefits, including coaching and counselling

🌈 The application journey has 3 key steps

1. An introductory call with a member of the Monzo Recruitment team
2. An initial call with the hiring manager
3. A series of role specific, behavioural & leadership principles interviews

This process should take around 3-4 weeks - your schedule is really important to us, so we promise to be as flexible as possible! We have some guidelines on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ace an application and interview at Monzo. You can read them here.

We’ll only close this role once we have enough applications for the next stage. Please submit your application as soon as possible to make sure you don’t miss out.