Director of Credit Strategy, Consumer Lending

Job Description

About Rate

Rate is building one of the industry’s most ambitious consumer lending platforms. While our foundation was built in mortgage, we’re rapidly expanding into a diversified Consumer Lending ecosystem that includes Home Equity, Personal Loans, Point-of-Sale financing, and future consumer credit products.

We’re looking for a forward-thinking leader who will bring analytical rigor to credit strategy and risk management across that ecosystem.

The Role

We’re seeking a Director of Credit Strategy, Consumer Lending to lead credit and profitability analytics across underwriting, pricing, and portfolio management as Rate scales its Consumer Lending business.

This leader will own the analytical framework that shapes how credit decisions are made across our Consumer Lending portfolio, including Home Equity, Personal Loans, Point-of-Sale financing, and future consumer credit products. You’ll define how data, models, decisioning tools, policies, and technology come together to drive profitable growth, exceptional customer experiences, and disciplined risk management.

In this role, you’ll dig deep into data, conduct sophisticated analysis, surface actionable insights, and develop recommendations that sharpen underwriting, optimize pricing, refine target populations, and maximize customer value.

This is a builder role for someone who enjoys exploring new data and capabilities, identifying high-impact opportunities, and creating go-to-market credit strategies from the ground up.

What You’ll Do

Own Consumer Lending Credit Analytics and Decision Strategy

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• Elevate the analytical framework that drives insight and uncovers opportunities across underwriting and pricing.
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• Apply data, ML/AI models, and advanced analytics to continually strengthen credit decision strategies, balancing risk-return trade-offs with creative solutions.
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• Translate complex findings into clear, data-driven recommendations and actionable enhancements.
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• Integrate credit bureau attributes and scores, cash flow insights, and alternative data into lending strategy.
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• Identify opportunities to deploy new models that improve outcomes across credit risk management and customer lifetime value.
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• Balance growth, customer experience, and portfolio performance through data-driven decision strategies.
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• Ensure decision strategies remain effective, explainable, compliant, and aligned with business objectives.
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Drive Consumer Lending Portfolio Performance

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• Monitor portfolio performance at a granular segment level to pinpoint key performance drivers, spot emerging trends, and adjust strategy as needed across lending products, acquisition channels, and customer segments.
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• Identify opportunities to improve approval rates, customer conversion, credit quality, loan performance, and customer outcomes.
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• Recommend strategy enhancements informed by portfolio trends, economic conditions, and emerging customer behaviors.
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• Establish key performance indicators to continuously optimize business performance.
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• Keep credit losses consistently within the company’s defined risk appetite.
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• Manage credit loss and portfolio forecasting across consumer lending products.
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• Own product-, segment-, and customer-level valuation frameworks across consumer lending products.
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Establish Growth and Testing Agendas Across Consumer Lending Products

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• Identify near-term opportunities to expand through new target segments, deeper approvals, larger loan amounts, and low-and-grow strategies, all while balancing growth against credit quality and performance.
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• Design challenger strategies and testing agendas that generate the data needed to improve decisioning, enable future population expansion, and support new model development.
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• Set testing budgets and quantify potential downside scenarios and portfolio impacts.
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• Partner with Product, Marketing, and Finance to align testing plans and secure appropriate investment budget.
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Collaborate Across the Business

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• Partner with Product and Engineering to seamlessly embed decision strategies into customer-facing experiences across the Consumer Lending platform.
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• Partner with internal analytics teams and external solution providers responsible for model development, validation, and performance monitoring.
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• Work closely with Product, Engineering, Data Science, Credit Risk, Finance, Compliance, and Operations to build scalable decision strategies that fuel the continued growth of Rate’s Consumer Lending business.
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What We’re Looking For

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• 5+ years of experience leading credit strategy, consumer risk strategy, decision science, or related functions within consumer lending.
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• Experience in residential lending (mortgage or home equity) and unsecured lending (personal loans or credit card) is preferred.
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• Experience designing and implementing credit strategies for digital consumer lending products.
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• Deep understanding of modern credit decisioning, automated risk management, and digital lending operations.
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• Proven ability to harness large datasets and translate analytical insights into scalable business strategies that drive measurable outcomes.
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• Ability to leverage AI tools to improve efficiency and deepen analytical insight.
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• Experience implementing and optimizing credit scoring strategies, including collaboration with modeling teams.
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• Experience combining traditional credit data with emerging sources—cash flow, behavioral, and alternative data—to improve lending decisions.
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• Strong command of consumer lending valuations, forecasting, portfolio management, and risk-adjusted growth.
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• Comfort operating in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment where new ideas move quickly from concept to execution.
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Why This Role Matters

Consumer Lending is a strategic growth priority for Rate, and intelligent decisioning will be a core differentiator as we continue to expand our portfolio.

As the Director of Credit Strategy, Consumer Lending, you’ll help shape how customers are evaluated, how lending decisions are made across the business, and how customer value is maximized across products. Your leadership will enable faster decisions, stronger portfolio performance, better customer experiences, and scalable growth—helping build one of the industry’s most innovative consumer lending platforms.