Head of Strategic Finance — SME Lending Platforms

The mandate

An SME lending platform is deciding how much growth should come from branch relationships, digital partnerships and repeat customers. Each channel presents a different acquisition cost, service burden and capital requirement, but current plans emphasise disbursement targets. The head of strategic finance will own the economic framework for those choices and the long-range plan, while independent risk teams continue setting credit standards and approving risk methods.

The first year should establish channel economics, a capital-aware growth model and an executive review of alternative operating structures. Employment is open-ended; the role continues shaping strategy after those foundations are in place. Eleven professionals form the strategic-finance team. Delhi NCR is the base, with visits to origination and servicing operations to verify the effort behind reported unit costs and the practical limits of proposed expansion.

The leader sets strategic model standards, challenges channel business cases and recommends deployment of approved resources. Loan sanctioning, provisioning methodology approval and fundraising commitments remain with authorised risk, finance and executive owners. A growth recommendation must show funding and capital dependencies, not assume they will be resolved later. Where uncertainty is material, the paper should offer conditional choices and evidence triggers rather than present a single aggressive plan as inevitable.

The lasting remit includes planning discipline, investment prioritisation and executive interpretation of changing channel performance. It does not include ownership of statutory books, legal collections or credit policy. Strategic finance will nevertheless ask whether repeat borrowing, partner concentration and servicing demand support the proposed economics, and will keep the distinction between commercial aspiration and verified performance visible throughout the board's growth deliberations.

What you will own

• Construct channel economics that distinguish acquisition expense, repeat-customer behaviour, servicing effort and approved risk inputs, reconciling the model to financial records and operational evidence before it informs growth targets.
• Recommend a phased growth plan with funding and capital constraints made explicit, identifying the conditions under which origination should accelerate, remain stable or pause despite attractive headline demand.
• Evaluate operating-model alternatives for branches and partner channels, comparing fixed commitments, variable cost and control dependencies without treating lower reported cost as proof of a superior long-term model.
• Lead long-range scenario planning with risk and treasury input, showing how customer mix and funding availability alter strategic options while preserving the independent ownership of their specialised assumptions.
• Present executive papers on channel concentration and expansion choices, distinguishing verified economics from untested expectations and naming the evidence needed before a proposed investment merits approval.
• Build a strategic-finance team that can investigate changes in unit economics, challenge unsupported growth narratives and maintain a controlled assumption history that executives can revisit after decisions are made.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring 12–18 years in banking or financial services with substantive strategic planning, business-finance or portfolio-economics accountability. Give an example where your work changed a lending or channel growth decision, including the resource or capital constraint that mattered. A disbursement forecast alone will not establish the ability to lead a strategic-finance function at this level.
• Demonstrate financial modelling that connects growth to acquisition cost, operating capacity, funding and risk-owned inputs. You must explain how you avoided double-counting repeat-customer benefits or assuming unlimited capital availability. Strong finance education is essential; familiarity with credit businesses should support informed collaboration, not an unsupported claim to make independent credit-risk decisions.
• Have worked across strategy, risk, treasury and operations when those teams preferred different growth outcomes. Evidence should show how you made assumptions comparable, preserved specialist authority and moved the decision forward despite incomplete information. The role needs a leader who can recommend a bounded experiment as confidently as a major expansion when the evidence supports the smaller step.
• Show leadership of analysts or business-finance managers, with clear review standards and concise executive communication. You should be able to identify when channel data is too weak for a precise conclusion and design practical validation. Site engagement, documented model controls and a willingness to challenge the chief executive constructively are necessary for credible head-of-function responsibility.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 9 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-106.