Area Credit Manager

Role overview

This position sits within the Financial Services business of Aditya Birla Capital Limited, in the Credit function under the Retail department. The role is responsible for leading credit evaluation and portfolio oversight for the STSL business, ensuring disciplined underwriting, timely approvals, strong portfolio hygiene, and effective coordination with business and support teams.

Job details

• Business: Financial Services
• Unit: Aditya Birla Capital Limited
• Job title: Area Credit Manager – STSL
• Reporting line: Circle Credit Head
• Function: Credit
• Department: Retail
• Date of JD creation/update: 6 March 2026

Job purpose

The purpose of this role is to strengthen credit decisioning for the STSL portfolio by ensuring policy adherence, assessing borrower creditworthiness, preserving portfolio quality, and supporting business growth through efficient, risk-aware approvals and stakeholder coordination.

Work scope and scale

• Business workforce: 50 people, including 34 on-roll employees and 16 off-roll staff
• FY24E closing book size: INR 2900 Cr
• FY24E file logins: 15000
• Product coverage: 1 product (STSL)
• Total locations: 95
• Geography mix: Tier 1 - 16, Tier 2 - 13, Tier 3 - 34, Tier 4 - 32
• Target early mortality / cheque bouncing: not more than 9.00%
• NPA target: not more than 2.00%
• TAT: as per SLA
• Approval rate target: 55%
• FY24E customers: 8500
• FY24E ATS: 35 lakhs
• FY24E PBT: INR 70 Cr
• Span of control: 4
• Productivity target: 22 files per CM

Business context

The organization has traditionally focused on secured lending and has built a strong balance sheet in that space. It has now expanded into Small Ticket Secured Lending (STSL) to leverage that financial strength in a higher-yield segment while keeping exposures carefully controlled. STSL caters to medium- and long-term working capital requirements of small businesses and individuals through customized products backed primarily by collateral or security.

The risk team evaluates the creditworthiness of applicants by reviewing both quantitative and qualitative factors such as business strength, earnings, capital adequacy, liquidity, management quality, and overall client credibility.

Key challenges

• Operating in a highly competitive market where digital data and alternate solutions are available instantly, while the underwriting process still involves a significant manual effort.
• Retaining strong performers in the team, especially when rival employers offer attractive compensation packages.
• Managing the portfolio in a fast-changing business environment with shifting competition and external conditions.
• Ensuring complete and reliable data availability for detailed credit appraisal, given the complexity of each proposal and the relevant customer, product, and regulatory requirements.
• Driving faster approval turnaround times without compromising credit quality.
• Protecting the portfolio by tracking pending documentation, regularizing margin shortfalls, and mitigating both customer and credit risk.
• Identifying emerging risks early and acting quickly in a dynamic, high-velocity business setting.

Key responsibilities

• Assess STSL proposals against defined credit criteria and use market intelligence, macroeconomic signals, and portfolio concentration to support sound decisions.
• Sanction proposals within delegated authority and assist approving authorities with clear, risk-based recommendations.
• Review fresh proposals and existing exposures to identify business, financial, management, industry, and facility structure risks.
• Point out key credit risks and propose mitigation actions to improve the workability of lending requests.
• Resolve or clarify queries raised by sanctioning authorities in a timely manner.
• Assign or recommend suitable delegation levels to RCMs, ACMs, and CMs to improve speed for parameterized proposals.
• Work with collections and legal teams to take action against defaulting customers.
• Track the STSL portfolio through ongoing review of fundamentals, ratings, covenants, and sector performance.
• Monitor covenant compliance and take corrective action when serious deviations arise.
• Spot early warning signals of deterioration and alert relationship teams and senior management to reduce potential loss.
• Recommend exposure reduction or full recovery actions before accounts move into non-performing status.
• Contribute to policy and process improvements by suggesting changes to risk matrices, interest rate policy, authorization matrices, risk universe, and related lending norms in line with regulatory needs.
• Improve approval notes and related workflows to keep pace with market shifts and new customer segments.
• Create and strengthen mechanisms that support high-quality TATs for lending validations and keep stakeholders aligned.
• Support sales teams in maintaining DSA and channel partner relationships through regular visits and trainings.
• Communicate expected credit standards to partners, sales teams, and distributors, while gathering the information needed for smooth disbursement.
• Review login trends with the business team, explain wastage, and guide corrective action.
• Deliver business and portfolio targets within the required timelines.
• Support team retention, learning, and internal development through continuous coaching and capability building.
• Identify workforce needs and help create an environment that enables growth.
• Coordinate with channel partners, sales teams, and other distributors to ensure files are complete and document execution is in place.
• Provide regular training to RMs on proposal validation standards and related processes.
• Monitor portfolio health, OTC movement, PDD movement, and compliance-related matters.
• Review vendor management activity and ensure audit queries are closed.
• Track delegation of authority exercised by RCMs.
• Equip the team with strong knowledge of selection norms, proposal analysis, and current secured lending practices.
• Nominate team members for product, behavioral, and negotiation training, and drive self-development initiatives.
• Lead improvement projects aimed at better process quality, stronger portfolio hygiene, improved ROA, and cost control.

Direct report responsibilities

The role leads Regional / Area Credit Managers for STSL. The reporting team is expected to handle day-to-day credit approvals, assess borrower creditworthiness using available data, follow credit policy checks, maintain audit and regulatory compliance across locations, work with collections and legal teams on defaults, and build strong internal and external relationships while improving portfolio performance.

Stakeholder management

• Internal stakeholders include Zonal/Regional Sales Managers, the sales team, the risk team, the operations team, other functions, and NSM/Business Head.
• Frequent interactions are required for business MIS, proposal reviews, new initiatives, branch updates, NPA reviews, pricing, market intelligence, client servicing issues, and portfolio reviews.
• External stakeholders include existing and potential customers, channel partners/DSAs, and legal/FI vendors.
• These interactions support CRM, commission updates, market understanding, and review of vendor quality and turnaround time.

Organizational relationship notes

The original job record expects the organization structure to show the level above and below this position, using position titles and indicating all reports of the role. It also includes a sign-off section for the job holder and reporting manager, with name and date of entry/approval to be maintained in the official hard copy record.

Additional notes

This JD references mandatory internal record-keeping fields such as business, unit, location, position details, reporting line, and the date of JD update. Those administrative placeholders are retained in the source record and should be completed in the formal HR document.