Head of Underwriting (m/w/d)

YouLend is hiring a risk-first Head of Underwriting to lead our EU underwriting function across nine countries, including Germany - our fastest-growing market. In this senior leadership role, you will take full ownership of scaling and managing the underwriting team based in our Berlin office (25+ people expected within 12 months), while also developing and shaping the EU risk strategy to enhance our underwriting processes and capabilities. The underwriting team is a core part of the YouLend Production Line and is responsible for approving and declining financing applications, deciding appropriate exposure limits, and pricing deals.

The department consists of three subteams: Credit Eligibility: Responsible for conducting eligibility checks and preparing the deal for underwriting. Credit Decisions: Responsible for evaluating credit risk and affordability, approving appropriate funding amounts and deal terms.

Requirements

Your primary objective is to ensure that customers are served well (as measured through speed and quality of decisioning financing applications), whilst achieving high approval rates and low loss rates. You and your Team Leaders will be responsible for hiring, training and developing current and prospective team members to meet business objectives. While operational excellence is crucial to your success, your role is targeted at enhancing our underwriting process and capabilities to optimise YouLend’s returns in EU – often in cross-team collaboration with the global Credit Risk, Capital Markets and Product teams.

You will establish yourself as a trusted leader, balancing growth with risk-adjusted returns (not just approvals). You will be expected to play an active role in Credit Committee, monitor performance of YouLend’s loan portfolio, and use data to proactively identify and propose improvements to our underwriting capabilities and tools. g.

Credit Risk, Compliance, Capital Markets, Product and Commercial) to continuously optimise underwriting tools, processes, and policies. Use data to proactively identify, propose and execute solutions to bridge policy gaps and adjust Credit Risk models, aimed at improving efficiency or returns Establish quality control measures to maintain high standards of accuracy and consistency across teams, including regular audits to verify adherence to internal policies and processes Hire and develop managers and individual underwriters alike, cemented in scalable training infrastructure Help take new products, partners, and markets from zero to one with the appropriate conversion-risk trade-off Act as a change leader, implementing improvements quickly and effectively and embedding them sustainably within the teams — with minimal disruption to day-to-day operations Substantial professional experience with underwriting or risk, normally gained over 3+ years. Ideally, working as a senior stakeholder in a growing FinTech company, in the financial services sector or at a bank A strong understanding of credit risk in continental EU, specifically Germany, coupled with a commercial mindset A strong track-record of managing people (ideally 10+) and mentoring your direct reports.