Lending & Insurance Lead

Role Overview

Lending & Insurance Lead at Du, responsible for developing and managing lending and embedded insurance products for du Pay's financial services platform.

Company Overview

Du is developing eitc Financial Services, a newly created entity that is 100% owned by eitc and operates under central bank licenses to develop financial services.

Role Purpose

Lead the full product lifecycle for du Pay's lending and embedded insurance offerings, from strategy and design through launch and optimization. Build a data-driven lending capability, develop differentiated propositions across customer segments, establish a strong external ecosystem of lending and insurance partners, and ensure all products are designed with regulatory compliance, responsible lending principles, and exceptional customer experience at the core.

Key Responsibilities

Lending and Insurance Product Strategy

• Define du Pay's overall lending and embedded insurance strategy.
• Develop a clear multi-year product vision and roadmap.
• Identify the highest-value lending and insurance opportunities across du Pay's customer base.
• Develop differentiated propositions for blue-collar customers, expatriates, UAE nationals, existing du Pay customers, new digitally acquired customers, and eligible SME and merchant customers.
• Identify opportunities to embed financial products directly into existing customer journeys.
• Develop clear build, buy or partner strategies for each product.
• Continuously monitor market trends, customer needs, technology developments and competitive activity.

Lending Product Portfolio

• Own the development and evolution of du Pay's lending portfolio, including micro-lending, short-term consumer credit, personal lending, salary-linked lending, transaction-based lending, cash-flow-based lending, device financing, embedded financing, buy-now-pay-later and instalment propositions, merchant and SME lending opportunities, and other responsible and data-driven lending products.
• Develop product propositions and value propositions.
• Define eligibility and customer segmentation strategies.
• Develop product features and customer journeys.
• Define loan amounts, tenors, pricing principles and repayment mechanisms in collaboration with licensed lending partners.
• Develop customer acquisition and cross-sell strategies.
• Identify opportunities to improve customer affordability and repayment outcomes.
• Continuously optimize products based on customer behaviour and portfolio performance.

Embedded Insurance Strategy

• Develop du Pay's embedded insurance product strategy and roadmap.
• Identify opportunities to integrate simple and relevant protection products into customer journeys, including remittances, payments and financial transactions, lending, device financing, savings, investments, and other digital financial products.
• Identify relevant insurance use cases and develop embedded customer journeys.
• Develop product propositions and economics for device protection, transaction-related protection, loan-related protection, micro-insurance products, personal accident and protection products, travel-related protection, and other simple and digitally distributed insurance propositions.
• Work with licensed insurance providers and intermediaries.
• Ensure a simple and transparent customer experience.
• Coordinate regulatory, legal and operational requirements.
• Develop scalable API-based insurance integrations.

Data, Credit Scoring and Decisioning

• Support the development of du Pay's data-driven lending capability.
• Identify relevant data sources for credit decisioning and customer segmentation.
• Leverage financial transaction and payment behavior to improve lending propositions.
• Explore the use of telecommunications and other relevant data sources where permitted by applicable laws, regulations and customer consent requirements.
• Develop strategies for alternative data and behavioral credit assessment.
• Partner with leading credit scoring, decision-engine and analytics providers.
• Support the development and continuous enhancement of predictive models.
• Improve customer eligibility, approval rates and credit risk outcomes.
• Identify opportunities to create personalized product offers.
• Develop appropriate data governance and model monitoring processes.

Product Development and Delivery

• Lead the full product lifecycle from idea through launch and optimization.
• Translate customer, commercial and partner requirements into product specifications.
• Prepare product requirements documents, user journeys, user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Define Minimum Viable Products and phased delivery plans.
• Manage the lending and insurance product backlog.
• Work closely with Engineering, Technology, UX, Data and Operations teams.
• Lead product testing and customer acceptance testing.
• Coordinate partner and API integrations.
• Ensure operational readiness before product launch.
• Monitor performance and continuously optimize products.

Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystem Development

• Identify, evaluate and manage partnerships with banks, finance companies, licensed lenders, balance-sheet providers, credit scoring providers, decision-engine providers, credit bureaus and data providers, lending technology platforms, loan servicing and collections providers, and fintech infrastructure providers.
• Identify, evaluate and manage partnerships with insurance companies, licensed insurance intermediaries, insurtech companies, insurance technology providers, embedded insurance platforms, and claims and servicing providers.
• Develop partner selection criteria.
• Conduct commercial and product evaluations.
• Support commercial negotiations.
• Develop partnership business cases.
• Define revenue-sharing and commercial models.
• Evaluate partner technology and API capabilities.
• Coordinate product and technology integrations.
• Monitor partner performance and service levels.

Commercial Strategy and Product Economics

• Develop business cases for new lending and insurance products.
• Define commercial models and product economics.
• Develop revenue and profitability models.
• Assess customer acquisition and lifetime-value economics.
• Monitor partner economics and revenue-sharing arrangements.
• Identify opportunities to improve unit economics.
• Develop cross-sell opportunities across the du Pay ecosystem.
• Support pricing strategies in collaboration with licensed partners and relevant Risk and Compliance functions.

Regulatory, Risk and Responsible Product Design

• Work closely with Legal, Compliance, Risk and external regulated partners.
• Ensure that regulatory and consumer protection requirements are incorporated into product design from the outset.
• Understand the product implications of requirements relating to customer affordability, creditworthiness, responsible lending, customer disclosures, consent and data usage, data privacy and protection, credit risk, collections and customer treatment, complaints management, product governance, insurance distribution, and customer suitability.
• Ensure transparent and understandable customer communications.
• Coordinate product governance and approval processes.

Customer Experience

• Develop simple, transparent and intuitive customer journeys.
• Remove unnecessary complexity from lending and insurance products.
• Design frictionless digital application and onboarding experiences.
• Develop embedded product offers that are relevant to the customer's context.
• Ensure that customers clearly understand product features, costs, obligations and risks.
• Use customer research and behavioral data to improve conversion and customer outcomes.
• Continuously optimize the customer experience.

Qualifications & Experience

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, Business, Technology, Engineering or a related discipline.
• MBA or relevant professional qualifications are advantageous.
• CFA, FRM, professional credit qualifications or relevant insurance qualifications would be beneficial but are not mandatory.

Experience

• Digital lending platforms.
• Fintech or embedded finance.
• Alternative data and credit scoring.
• Decision engines.
• Machine-learning-based credit analytics.
• Telecom data and financial-services products.
• Device financing.
• Micro-lending.
• Insurance technology.
• Embedded insurance.
• API-based financial products.
• UAE, GCC or broader MENA financial services.

Skills & Competencies

Product Leadership

• Develop compelling product strategy.
• Excellent roadmap development and prioritization skills.
• Translate complex financial products into simple customer propositions.

Lending and Financial Services Expertise

• Strong understanding of lending products and economics.
• Understanding of credit decisioning and lending customer journeys.
• Familiarity with credit risk and responsible lending principles.

Data and Analytics

• Strong understanding of the role of data in financial services.
• Work effectively with data scientists and analytics teams.
• Understanding of alternative data and predictive modelling concepts.

Commercial Acumen

• Develop business cases.
• Strong understanding of unit economics and product profitability.
• Structure partnership economics.

Partnerships

• Strong relationship management and negotiation capabilities.
• Engage with senior executives at banks, financial institutions, insurers and technology providers.

Technology

• Strong understanding of digital product development.
• Familiarity with APIs and platform integrations.
• Work effectively with Engineering and Technology teams.

Execution

• Strong program and delivery management skills.
• Manage multiple workstreams simultaneously.
• Operate effectively in a fast-paced and evolving environment.
• Strong bias toward execution and delivery.

Communication

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Explain complex lending, data and insurance concepts to senior management and non-specialist audiences.