Lead, Legal & Recovery At Credpal

Purpose Statement

The Lead, Legal & Recovery will own CredPal's legal recovery strategy and execution, with direct responsibility for improving recoveries across delinquent, high-risk, and difficult-to-collect accounts.

• We are not looking for someone who only provides legal opinions or sends demand letters. This is a hands-on, commercially driven role for someone who can take full ownership of the recovery portfolio, develop clear action plans for major exposures, and move decisively from demand and negotiation to legal escalation, external recovery, field action, litigation, settlement, and enforcement where appropriate.
• The successful candidate must be firm, highly execution-driven, and focused on measurable recovery outcomes able to challenge underperforming recovery partners, negotiate firmly, escalate cases without unnecessary delay, drive matters relentlessly to resolution, and ultimately deliver measurable cash recoveries to the business.

Responsibilities

• Recovery Strategy: Develop and execute aggressive, structured recovery strategies across delinquency buckets, high-value exposures, written-off accounts, and difficult-to-recover portfolios.
• Legal Escalation: Determine the appropriate legal recovery route for delinquent accounts and ensure timely escalation through demand notices, settlement negotiations, litigation, enforcement, and other lawful recovery mechanisms.
• Portfolio Segmentation: Segment recovery accounts by exposure, delinquency stage, customer profile, probability of recovery, and appropriate recovery channel.
• Demand & Legal Notices: Drive the preparation, issuance, tracking, and follow-up of demand letters, pre-action notices, settlement agreements, and other recovery documentation.
• Recovery Partner Management: Manage and hold external law firms, recovery agencies, field agents, and other approved recovery partners accountable to clearly defined targets and timelines.
• Litigation Management: Manage CredPal's recovery litigation portfolio from commencement through judgment and enforcement, ensuring cases progress without unnecessary delays.
• Field Recovery: Coordinate lawful physical recovery and customer-engagement activities for accounts requiring field intervention.
• Negotiation & Settlement: Lead negotiations with delinquent customers and counterparties, structure commercially viable repayment plans, and recommend settlements where appropriate.
• High-Value Accounts: Personally oversee high-value and sensitive recovery cases requiring senior-level intervention.
• Collections Collaboration: Work closely with Collections, Credit, Risk, Finance, Data, and Operations teams to ensure seamless escalation from collections into legal recovery.
• Data & Skip Tracing: Leverage available customer, transaction, employment, banking, contact, and location data to improve recovery strategies and contactability, subject to applicable laws and internal policies.
• Recovery Tracking: Maintain clear visibility of every escalated account, action taken, responsible recovery channel, next step, expected recovery amount, and recovery status.
• Recovery Economics: Evaluate recovery costs against expected recoveries and ensure external legal and recovery expenses remain commercially justified.
• Documentation & Evidence: Ensure loan documentation, agreements, transaction records, communications, and supporting evidence required for enforcement are complete and properly maintained.
• Legal Risk Management: Advise the business on legal risks relating to lending, debt recovery, customer disputes, settlements, enforcement, and contractual obligations.
• Compliance: Ensure all recovery activities comply with applicable Nigerian laws, regulatory requirements, consumer-protection standards, data-protection requirements, and CredPal policies.
• Reporting: Provide weekly recovery reports to Management showing portfolio movement, recoveries achieved, escalations, legal cases, blocked accounts, key risks, and next actions.

Key Success Metrics

• Value and percentage of delinquent debt recovered.
• Recovery rate across assigned delinquency buckets.
• Recovery achieved from high-value and written-off accounts.
• Reduction in aged delinquent balances.
• Speed of escalation from failed collections to legal recovery.
• Performance of external law firms and recovery partners against targets.
• Number and value of successful settlements and enforcement outcomes.
• Reduction in stalled or inactive recovery cases.
• Recovery cost as a percentage of amounts recovered.
• Accuracy and timeliness of recovery reporting and case tracking.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) and B.L, with admission to the Nigerian Bar.
• Minimum of 5 - 8 years of post-call experience, with significant exposure to debt recovery, commercial litigation, banking, lending, fintech, or financial services.
• Strong experience handling debt recovery, loan enforcement, commercial disputes, settlements, and litigation.
• Demonstrable track record of recovering significant delinquent or difficult debt portfolios.
• Strong understanding of Nigerian lending, credit, contract, insolvency, enforcement, and consumer-protection frameworks.
• Experience managing external counsel, recovery agencies, field recovery teams, and other third-party recovery partners.
• Strong negotiation skills with the ability to handle difficult debtors and complex settlement discussions.
• Commercial mindset with a strong understanding of the relationship between legal action, recovery probability, cost, and business outcomes.
• Ability to prioritize recovery cases based on value, urgency, enforceability, and probability of recovery.
• Strong analytical and investigative skills, with the ability to interpret customer and portfolio data to guide recovery action.
• Excellent drafting skills across demand notices, settlement agreements, legal correspondence, briefs, and other recovery documentation.
• Strong stakeholder-management skills and the confidence to work directly with senior management.
• Highly accountable, target-driven, persistent, and comfortable working in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment.
• Strong ethics and judgment, with the ability to pursue recovery firmly while maintaining legal, regulatory, and reputational standards.