About This Role
This role involves independently assessing education loan applications, balancing customer eligibility, repayment capacity, academic and employability factors, collateral support, and legal and technical acceptability. The Deputy Area Manager ensures portfolio quality and makes credit decisions within an approved authority matrix.
Responsibilities
- Review applicant and co-applicant identity, relationship, academics, admission, institution, course, country, test scores, and requested funding
- Assess income, banking, bureau, obligations, repayment capacity, and policy eligibility
- Evaluate cost of education, scholarships, margin or own contribution, living expenses, and the proposed loan amount
- Assess secured and unsecured structures, including property, gold, or other approved collateral, through applicable reports and controls
- Own or review Legal and Technical Assessment requirements for secured cases and ensure satisfactory reports are available before progressing the credit decision
- Engage and coordinate with approved third-party valuers and lawyers to facilitate timely valuation, technical, and legal reports
- Review report validity, observations, conditions, and exceptions for credit consideration
- Review verification outcomes, fraud indicators, deviations, and mitigants, and raise evidence-based queries
- Prepare or validate credit assessment notes, recommendations, sanction conditions, and deviation matrices
- Decide, recommend, refer, or decline cases within the approved credit authority matrix and ensure complete decision audit trail
- Monitor underwriting quality, approval, rejection, and deviation trends, turnaround time, productivity, and portfolio feedback
- Coordinate with Sales, Risk, Operations, RCU, Collections, Legal, Technical, collateral teams, and external service providers while preserving independent credit judgment
- Provide market and portfolio feedback for policy refinement, process improvement, and new product launches
- Own the assigned credit work queue and resolve day-to-day case queries
- Maintain accurate system records and escalate material exceptions beyond delegated authority
Requirements
- Graduate or postgraduate in Finance, Commerce, Economics, Management, or a related discipline
- 1-3 years of relevant experience in credit appraisal, underwriting, secured/unsecured lending, or financial services
- Education Loan exposure preferred
- Credit appraisal and financial analysis
- Bureau, banking, and income assessment
- Academic and employability assessment
- Secured and unsecured lending
- Legal and Technical report interpretation
