Credit & Commercial Manager in England

About us

Lumen Cards is a new consumer lending business preparing to launch its first credit card to the UK consumer market in Q1 2026. Our management team brings over 20 years of experience each in consumer finance, and we operate from two locations: London Kings Cross, and Leicester. At Lumen, we approach consumer lending with a “do the right thing” mindset. Our goal is to provide credit that helps customers solve real-life problems. We’re committed to building a great place to work. We want every colleague to feel valued, empowered and impactful. We celebrate shared success, support one another through challenges and foster a culture where ideas are welcomed, and collaboration is second nature. When things go wrong, we don’t point fingers, but we pull together to find a way forward.

Role Overview

You will be joining Lumen at an exciting time, as we prepare to launch our first credit card product. We are looking for a credit & commercial manager to lead the development and optimisation of our credit strategy from day one. This is a key role in an early-stage fintech, where you’ll be the central point of expertise for credit risk decisioning, responsible for shaping credit strategy for acquisitions, managing in-life credit performance, and driving commercial outcomes. You’ll design and implement data-driven credit strategies that balance growth, risk, and customer outcomes.

In a new lending business and ever-changing macro-economic environment, credit dynamics evolve quickly, and your role will be critical in ensuring our strategies are proactive, responsive, and resilient. You’ll work across pricing, credit limits, affordability, and portfolio optimisation, collaborating with product, tech, and data teams to embed credit thinking into every part of the customer journey. We are a small but rapidly growing business. The role holder will be expected to be a hands-on contributor to the business while also helping mentor new joiners as we grow. This is a unique opportunity to help build a responsible lending business from its earliest stages, influence strategic decisions, and make a meaningful impact on how credit is delivered to UK consumers.

Key Responsibilities

• Credit Strategy & decisioning
  • Optimise credit strategy and decisioning for credit cards, including deployment of new risk scorecards and understanding associated risks.
  • Shape and enhance credit policy, working closely with product and tech teams to implement changes.
  • Leverage alternative data sources such as Open Banking to improve credit decisioning and expand access.
• Pricing & Commercial Strategy
  • Manage pricing and commercial strategy, providing recommendations to senior leadership.
  • Build and maintain NPV and pricing optimisation models to inform lending decisions, while understanding their limitations.
  • Formulate strategies to improve affordability policy and ensure responsible lending and good customer outcomes.
• Portfolio & Performance Management
  • Monitor credit performance across new customer acquisition and in-life credit line increases.
  • Track loss rates, risk-adjusted income, and affordability outcomes, recommending strategy adjustments.
  • Analyse portfolio trends to identify areas of improvement and propose data-driven changes.
• Insight, Forecasting & Reporting
  • Use advanced statistical techniques to predict customer behaviour and forecast future demand.
  • Support lifetime value modelling and scenario analysis to guide strategic decisions.
  • Build dashboards and tools to monitor performance.
  • Prepare regular updates for the credit committee and senior stakeholders.

Skills & Experience

• Adept at translating analytical insights into commercial strategy, with a proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive decisions that balance growth, risk, and customer outcomes.
• Proven experience (3-6 yrs) in credit risk analysis within consumer lending, ideally in credit cards or unsecured products.
• Strong proficiency in SQL and/or Python for data manipulation, analysis, and model development.
• Hands-on experience with credit scorecard deployment and credit policy design, including affordability assessments.
• Ability to build and apply NPV, lifetime value, and pricing optimisation models to support lending decisions.
• Skilled in leveraging alternative data sources (e.g. Open Banking) to enhance credit decisioning and expand access.
• Familiarity with UK consumer credit regulations and responsible lending practices.
• Experience in monitoring portfolio performance, identifying trends, and recommending actionable strategy changes.

Personal Attributes

• Structured and holistic thinker, able to approach complex problems with clarity and logic.
• Commercially curious and analytically driven, with a passion for uncovering insights that drive business growth and improve customer outcomes.
• Collaborative team player, comfortable working cross-functionally with product, tech, data science, and finance teams.
• Adaptable and resilient, thriving in fast-paced, evolving environments.
• Ownership-driven, with a high bar for quality, accountability, and impact.
• Committed to continuous learning and knowledge sharing, staying ahead of industry trends and analytical techniques.