- The Relationship Manager – Business Banking is primarily responsible for driving merchant and business lending sales, with a strong focus on growing the loan book profitably across assigned merchant segments. The role combines aggressive loan origination, disciplined portfolio management, and transaction-led merchant engagement through online and offline payment solutions (POS). Relationship management is leveraged to drive lending penetration, utilization, and repayment performance.
Key Responsibilities
Merchant & Business Lending.
- Originate and close merchant and SME loan deals across key sectors including FMCG, Mobile & Electronics, Fashion, household Goods, Building Materials, retail chains, amongst others.
- Own end-to-end loan sales execution: prospecting, on-boarding, credit documentation, disbursement coordination, and post-disbursement monitoring.
- Build, grow, and actively manage a high-quality loan book, ensuring strong utilization, healthy repayment behavior, and minimal delinquency.
- Drive repeat borrowing and loan up-sell by deepening lending penetration within existing merchant portfolios.
- Work closely with credit and risk teams to ensure quality underwriting while meeting aggressive lending targets.
- Achieve and exceed assigned loan volume, loan value, and portfolio growth targets for the region.
Portfolio, Performance & Market Management
- Monitor daily, weekly, and monthly KPIs across loan disbursement, portfolio quality, repayment, and transactions.
- Actively drive to meet and exceed lending and payments performance targets.
- Conduct regular merchant visits to drive loan performance, address risks early, and unlock new lending opportunities.
- Track market and competitor lending trends and provide insights to management to improve product and pricing strategies.
Offline Payments Acquiring
- Drive adoption of offline payment solutions (POS terminals) as an enabler for lending and transaction visibility.
- Ensure lending merchants actively process transactions via POS to support credit assessment and repayment tracking.
- Monitor merchant activity, follow up on inactive terminals, and coordinate POS retrieval when required.
- Grow regional transaction volume, value, and revenue in alignment with lending objectives.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Sales, Marketing, Finance, Business Administration, or a related discipline.
- 6–8 years of experience in merchant lending, SME lending, business banking, or fintech credit sales.
- Strong understanding of cashflow-based lending, merchant underwriting, and loan portfolio management.
- Experience acquiring and managing a lending portfolio of a minimum of N2B+
- Proven track record of loan book growth and sales target achievement.
- Highly results-driven, commercially minded, and execution-focused.
- Excellent communication, negotiation, and relationship management skills.