Interim Chief Operating Officer — Fintech Collections Rebuild

The mandate

The largest field-collections agency ceased trading without notice after misconduct complaints triggered lender suspensions, leaving accounts unallocated and repayment promises untracked. The operations founder is moving to a product role, so recovery and customer conduct need a temporary executive owner independent of prior vendor selection.

The interim must start within three weeks for a fixed ten-month assignment. The company will recruit a permanent COO once the target captive-versus-partner model is approved, reserving five weeks for handover before the contract expires.

The seat is ready to transfer when all accounts have verified ownership, repayment promises reconcile to cash, complaint and contact controls pass independent samples, roll-rate performance remains within the revised plan for three cohorts, and the successor has completed one monthly agency review.

The interim may suspend agencies, redistribute accounts, add temporary captive capacity and allocate ₹9 crore of recovery spend. Permanent site creation, workforce changes above 8%, settlements outside credit policy, customer remediation above ₹5 crore and contracts over ₹20 crore require executive committee or board approval.

Credit-model design, legal recovery strategy and new-loan growth are not part of the assignment. The brief concerns humane, controlled servicing of existing obligations and reliable conversion of customer commitments into accounted cash.

Why this seat is open

The abrupt supplier failure made prior single-provider concentration impossible to defend. Internal operations heads are divided between teams that selected or monitored the agency. An interim COO can reset the model without preserving vendor history or pursuing a permanent founder-era structure.

What you will own

• Reassign every account through a controlled inventory showing balance, delinquency, consent, contact history and accountable agent.
• Decide the temporary captive-and-partner capacity mix using conduct risk, recovery yield, concentration and ramp speed.
• Issue contact, promise-to-pay and settlement evidence standards and suspend any channel that fails sampled adherence.
• Reconcile agency receipts and customer promises to lender cash and investigate every unexplained break.
• Approve performance scorecards that measure sustainable cure, complaints, kept promises and cost rather than gross collections alone.
• Select the permanent operating model after three portfolio cohorts demonstrate stable conduct and roll-rate outcomes.
• Transfer agency contracts, customer remediations, capacity economics, control samples and the first ninety-day plan to the successor.

Candidate qualifications

• Led collections, servicing or COO functions in consumer finance, a digital lender, bank or credit-card business.
• Rebuilt operations after a major agency failure, misconduct event or abrupt capacity loss.
• Managed customer-contact controls, repayment promises, settlements and lender cash reconciliation end to end.
• Designed partner scorecards that prevented short-term recoveries from masking conduct deterioration.
• Directed workforces above 500 across captive and external sites during compressed ramp-up.
• Understands Indian digital-lending conduct, outsourcing and recovery-agent requirements.

Non-negotiables

• Available in Hyderabad within three weeks and willing to visit partner sites without notice.
• No current commercial tie to a collections agency under consideration.
• Will not accept recovery targets that depend on unapproved contact or settlement practices.
• Must have direct operating authority over collections, not only credit strategy.

1. 49 words maximum. Confirm your start date and disclose any agency relationship relevant to the proposed network.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe an abrupt collections-capacity loss you recovered and the time taken to restore account ownership.
3. 49 words maximum. Which metric best exposes recoveries achieved at unacceptable customer-conduct cost?