Chief Operating Officer — Consumer-Finance Book

The mandate

A listed consumer-finance business has identified that its operating model distributes ownership across origination, servicing, complaints and collections in ways that fragment the customer experience. Applications are approved against one set of promises, servicing teams interpret exceptions differently, complaints arrive too late to influence product decisions, and collections activity is managed apart from the circumstances that produce arrears. Each function can demonstrate local compliance while customers experience the cumulative outcome. The board has therefore created one Chief Operating Officer role with end-to-end accountability.

The incoming executive will oversee approximately ₹5,350 crore in assets and influence about 1,000 employees and material partners across originations, fulfilment, servicing, payments, complaints, hardship, collections and operational change. Risk, compliance and internal audit retain their independent responsibilities. The COO must make the first line work as a connected system, giving every customer journey a named owner and every important exception a visible economic and conduct consequence.

The immediate challenge is to complete remediation without turning it into a parallel bureaucracy. Thousands of cases may require review, yet the same people and systems must serve current customers. The appointee will determine which work can be industrialised, which decisions require qualified judgement and where partner capacity is safe. They must also protect evidence, consistency and customer communication while improving delivery reliability and productivity.

This is not a process-mapping commission. The board expects difficult choices about product variants, service promises, site responsibilities and leadership seats. Capital and capacity should follow journeys that can be operated responsibly; propositions dependent on repeated manual rescue must be redesigned, repriced or stopped.

Why this seat is open

Responsibility previously sat across product, operations and control committees. That distributed arrangement has not provided a single executive answer for repeat failings or remediation progress. The new role is classified urgent, with a six-to-eight-week path from qualified shortlist to offer. Interim governance protects critical activity but cannot make permanent organisation or investment choices.

What you will own

• Establish journey ownership from application to closure, including hand-offs between internal teams and partners.
• Govern remediation population, decision rules, quality assurance, redress execution and sustainable closure.
• Reconcile the ₹5,350 crore book with service demand, complaints, arrears, loss and operational cost.
• Simplify products and exceptions whose operating burden or customer outcome cannot be defended.
• Create one capacity plan across servicing, complaints, hardship and collections, including stressed volumes.
• Reset third-party standards, monitoring and exit readiness for material operational dependencies.
• Lead approximately 1,000 employees and partners with clear accountabilities and succession for critical roles.
• Give the board early warning of delivery, customer, people and control variance, with named corrective decisions.

The first 12 months

In the first 90 days, validate the remediation population and the operating baseline. Meet the 30 stakeholders most consequential to the current complexity, including customers represented through complaint evidence, frontline colleagues, product owners, risk leaders and major partners. Trace several adverse outcomes across their full journey and identify where local targets reward the wrong action. Stabilise any high-severity risk, assess the leadership team and agree a board scorecard with explicit decision gates.

Months four to nine should settle the operating model. Assign journey owners, consolidate duplicative forums and remove exceptions that lack continuing approval. Introduce common demand, capacity and quality planning, then release measurable customer value, cash or colleague capacity. Remediation fixes must move into ordinary management information rather than remain dependent on programme reporting.

By year end, delivery should show a repeatable improvement in reliability, productivity and end-to-end accountability. The next capital and talent plan should be locked, with downside actions for adverse volumes or slower remediation. The value case must land within 10% of the agreed first-year forecast. Forecasts should remain useful for three consecutive quarters; high-priority issues should close by approved dates with independent proof of sustainability; no severe escalation should remain unresolved beyond 30 days.

What the board will measure

• Customer outcomes through complaints, repeat contacts, remediation accuracy and recurrence of root causes.
• Delivery and productivity by complete journey rather than isolated functional output.
• Forecast accuracy across volumes, capacity, cash, customer and people assumptions.
• Closure of priority risks with evidence that fixes operate outside programme supervision.
• Keep at least nine in ten critical people while establishing immediate successor cover for seven in ten direct-report roles.
• A quantified improvement in the operating constraint behind conduct remediation, supported by a clean baseline and named data owner.

The person

You are a current or recent COO, EVP Operations or Business Operations President with 18–22 years in financial services or an adjacent regulated environment. Banking, insurance, payments, wealth and regulated fintech backgrounds are relevant where customer stakes, operational scale and governance intensity are comparable.

You have carried at least ₹3,100 crore of P&L, book, budget or accountable portfolio responsibility and led no fewer than 1,000 people. Your evidence includes end-to-end delivery across multiple sites, channels or markets, with quantified service and cost outcomes. You can describe a moment when the original plan failed, the facts you established and the choices you personally made.

The board particularly values two completed transitions: a portfolio decision that removed complexity and a leadership-system change made while remediation was live. You challenge optimistic cases without weakening followership and understand the line between first-line ownership and independent control.

Compensation and terms

Fixed compensation is ₹3.2–4.6 crore plus performance variable and LTI, calibrated to final scope and current mix. The permanent appointment is based in Mumbai on a hybrid pattern and offers regular group-board and risk-and-people-committee exposure. A notice period of up to six months can be accommodated.

Confidentiality

The organisation will be identified only after reciprocal interest and a confidentiality undertaking. Market, scale and circumstances are composite and must not be used to infer or approach a possible client.