Collections & Customer Service Manager (B2C Lending/Fintech)

Our client is an established fintech and consumer lending business providing accessible digital credit solutions across Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Africa. Operating in a regulated financial services environment, they place strong emphasis on responsible lending, credit risk, AML/CFT compliance, fraud prevention, and customer-focused financial services

 

Role overview

 

Our client is establishing a new online consumer lending business in Poland. This is one of the first two positions to be based locally, and it carries responsibility for the full post-funding customer lifecycle: service delivery, complaint resolution, arrears management and recoveries.

  

The role is deliberately hands-on in its initial phase. The successful candidate will respond to customer enquiries directly, review calls, and work early-stage arrears cases personally. This is intentional. The insight gained in those first months will inform our service standards, the design of our client’s automation, the collections strategy, and the performance targets applied to our outsourced partner.

  

Software development is managed centrally by our head office team. The role defines operational requirements and validates delivery; it does not involve building systems.

  

Note: This is a greenfield operation. There is no established local team or process, and for an initial period the successful candidate will be executing the work as well as designing it. They are therefore seeking someone comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy, and who wishes to influence how the business is built.

  

Job Type: Full Time/Permanent

Location: Warsaw

Workplace: Onsite

Level: Mid-level (2–5 years), hands-on

Reports to: Senior management, Australian head office

Focus: Customer service delivery, complaints, arrears, recoveries and automation

Direct reporting line to senior management, with responsibility for establishing the function rather than inheriting it

Scope to shape process, tooling and strategy in a business at the point of market entry

Submission: Please apply with your updated CV in english

  

Requirements

• 2 to 5 years' experience in collections, credit control, customer service operations, payments or revenue recovery
• Strong Excel and reporting capability, with sufficient comfort in data to produce analysis independently rather than request it
• Willingness to work cases and handle customer contact directly during the initial period. The role requires sustained involvement in operational detail and is not a purely supervisory position.
• Native-level Polish, and English of a standard sufficient to present and defend recommendations to management in Australia
• Working knowledge of the Polish recoveries market, including collection agencies, debt purchasers and placement practice
• Demonstrable interest in automation and AI tooling, supported by practical application rather than theoretical familiarity
• A high degree of self-direction. The reporting line sits in a different time zone, and the successful candidate will largely set their own priorities.
• Experience in lending, fintech, telecommunications or utilities is preferred

  

Responsibilities

  

Outsourced partner (BPO) management

• Own the relationship with our outsourced contact centre and collections partner, including briefing, capacity planning, invoicing and performance management
• Set and monitor performance standards, including abandonment rate, first response time, average handling time, resolution rate, quality scores, and total utility (the proportion of billed shift hours actually spent handling calls and emails)
• Review calls and tickets directly and conduct independent quality assurance and calibration, using our existing AI-assisted and interactive QA tooling rather than relying on partner self-scoring
• Forecast contact volumes, review staffing assumptions, and manage cost per contact

  

Customer service and automation

• Handle customer enquiries and escalations directly during the initial period
• Categorise contact drivers and address the underlying causes. The primary objective is to prevent contact, not simply to handle it more quickly.
• Develop and improve our automation stack, which currently comprises integrated and intelligent IVR, AI-assisted email handling, self-service integration and the customer self-service portal, with the objective of resolving routine contact without agent involvement
• Monitor containment and deflection rates, and review cases where automation performs poorly
• Manage complaints end to end, including correspondence with UOKiK and the Rzecznik Finansowy within prescribed timeframes, and remediate the underlying causes

  

Arrears and collections

• Own the arrears strategy, including segmentation, contact timing, channel selection and messaging by risk band
• Set collections targets and budgets, run campaigns, and report on outcomes daily
• Improve payment success rates through retry logic, payment method mix, failed payment handling, payment links, BLIK and other local payment rails
• Design payment arrangements and hardship processes that customers are able to complete
• Implement automated collections tooling in conjunction with head office, and progressively reduce manual and outsourced handling
• Monitor roll rates, cure rates, promise-kept rates and recovery curves by vintage and by strategy

  

Debt analysis, placement and sale

• Analyse the portfolio to determine which accounts are worked in house, which are placed externally, and which are sold
• Select and manage external collection agencies and debt purchasers, including commission structures and comparative performance review
• Prepare placement and sale files, ensure data quality and lawful transfer under RODO, and reconcile recoveries and fees
• Support portfolio pricing and commercial negotiation in conjunction with head office

  

Reporting and compliance

• Own arrears, recovery, service and complaint reporting to management in Australia, including building and maintaining the underlying reporting
• Present performance and recommendations to head office, supported by analysis
• Support audit and internal control requirements, inputs to quarterly and annual KNF reporting, and bad debt VAT relief (ulga na złe długi) in conjunction with finance
• Ensure collections and service activity remains consistent with the Consumer Credit Act, KNF and UOKiK expectations on fair treatment and contact practice, and RODO

   

Tools and systems

• Advanced Excel, and SQL for direct interrogation of loan book and customer service data
• Reporting or BI platforms such as Power BI, Looker Studio, Metabase or Tableau
• CRM and ticketing platforms. We operate Salesforce and Freshdesk; experience with comparable systems is considered transferable.
• Collections systems, and payment rails used in the Polish market
• Automation and AI tooling, including IVR, workflow automation and LLM-based agents
• Third-party collections and debt recovery platforms operating in the Polish market

  

Working arrangement

• Onsite in Warsaw, during Polish business hours
• Reporting to senior management in Australia, with a short daily call scheduled early in the Polish working day, corresponding to the close of the Australian business day
• Periodic travel to head office is anticipated during the first year

  

What success looks like

• Arrears and roll rates within target, with recovery performance explicable by cohort
• Improved payment success rates and a reduction in failed transactions
• Reduced contact volumes as underlying causes are removed, with routine enquiries resolved through automation
• The outsourced partner delivering to agreed standards, at an improving cost per contact
• Complaints resolved within required timeframes, with root causes remediated rather than recurring
• Placement and sale decisions supported by analysis, with agency performance measured rather than assumed
• Management in Australia holding timely visibility of collections and service performance without needing to request it