Job Description

The Credit Model Technician is responsible for developing, maintaining and enhancing Credit Risk Models and tools that support the Credit Lab's analytical, pricing, and risk management functions. The role ensures the accuracy, reliability and compliance of credit risk models while enabling effective decision-making across business and operational divisions. The incumbent collaborates closely with risk, credit, data, and systems teams to ensure seamless integration of models into credit systems and processes.
Key Responsibilities
1. Credit Model Development

• Maintain, enhance and troubleshoot existing credit risk models and tools.
• Develop business cases for new credit risk models for submission to the Risk Models Technical Committee.
• Prepare detailed technical specifications for the development of credit risk models.
• Design, develop and test credit risk models and risk measurement tools.
• Support external consultants and internal credit model developers in developing and refining credit risk models.
• Provide technical advice on model development methodologies, assumptions and design.

2. Credit Lab Data Warehouse

• Use credit and portfolio data for developing and maintaining credit risk models.
• Validate accuracy and completeness of data flows between models, systems and data sources.
• Perform data quality checks and identify data anomalies ahead of model use.

3. Credit System Platform

• Support the Credit System Architect to design, build and maintain the platform used to house credit risk models and tools.
• Provide technical and user support for all credit risk tools implemented on the platform.
• Develop and maintain user manuals, technical documentation and process guides.
• Support implementation, testing and training of credit systems and modelling tools.

4. Credit Risk Pricing and Rating

• Support the Credit Lab Manager in the activities of the Pricing Working Group.
• Validate credit ratings, PDs, LGDs and related risk metrics used within the pricing model.
• Conduct review and testing of model outputs to ensure consistency with pricing requirements.
• Validate data inputs and information used in credit rating and risk assessment models.
• Test and verify standardised outputs from credit rating models are complete, accurate and reliable.
• Liaise with Credit Officers, Investment Officers, Technical Experts and Portfolio Officers to ensure consistency and integrity of rating information.

5. Governance and Reporting

• Prepare submissions for the Technical Committee relating to model development, validation and maintenance.
• Ensure compliance with scheduled model maintenance cycles and governance requirements.
• Demonstrate model performance over time and highlight emerging issues or trends.
• Provide well-reasoned responses to questions and challenges raised by the Committee.
• Produce accurate and insightful analyses and reports that support credit and risk decision-making.
• Ensure reliability and traceability of data used in all reporting.

6. Stakeholder Management

• Build and maintain effective relationships with management, business units, and key stakeholders to facilitate

effective operational support.
Key Measurements of Outputs
1. Delivery against agreed model development and maintenance timelines.
2. Accuracy and reliability of model outputs and documentation.
3. Quality and completeness of submissions to the governance committees.
4. User adoption and satisfaction with credit systems and tools.
5. Successful validation of credit risk data, ratings and metrics.
6. Compliance with internal model governance standards and audit requirements
Expertise & Technical Competencies
a) Data Collection and Analysis

• Skilled in the use of advanced/complex analytical techniques.
• Ability to use judgement to decide upon the most appropriate analytical techniques according to the situation.
• Recognises underlying principles, patterns, or themes in an array of related information, and determines whether additional information would be useful or necessary.
• Through an in-depth understanding of the business environment, reviews outputs of analysis to identify anomalies and concludes, relating these to operational circumstances.
• Ability to model a range of scenarios covering all potential business circumstances and highlight potential risks/opportunities.

b) Detail Orientation

• Identifies multiple sources/approaches of information to ensure that details are addressed.
• Reviews the work of others for accuracy and thoroughness.
• Follows up to ensure tasks are completed and commitments met by others.

c) Solution Focus

• Identifies complex problems based on a broad range of factors, many of which are ambiguous or difficult to define.
• While remaining guided by organisational values, identifies optimal solutions, thinking first in terms of possible approaches and flexibilities in the system vs. blind adherence to rules or procedures.
• Evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of solutions after they have been implemented and identifies needed changes.

d) Policies and Procedures

• Has a detailed understanding of relevant policies and procedures and interprets these according to operational circumstances to ensure compliance.
• Understands the business context sufficiently to recommend improvements and modifications to existing policy.
• Is able to write new procedures.

e) Reporting

• Designs / customises reports to meet user needs.
• Prepares complex or tailored reports, gathers information from a variety of sources, analyses and includes in a report.
• Keeps standard reports under review and proposes improvements to meet user needs.

f) Financial Acumen

• Makes sound financial decisions after having analysed their impacts on the organisation, partner agencies, and community.
• Effectively prepares budgetary submissions and forecasts for own department.
• Knows the internal and external factors that impact resource and asset availability.
• Ability to interpret management account reports in an operational/commercial context and take action as appropriate to maximise revenues and control costs.

g) Risk Management Policies and Procedures

• Develops innovative approaches to managing significant business risks effectively and efficiently.
• Leads implementation, execution and monitoring activities.
• Advises on best solutions and foresees the impact of changes in regulations, policies and procedures for non-complex and increasingly complex business issues.

Minimum Qualification

• A Bachelor's Degree in Informatics, Mathematics, Risk Management, Accounting, Statistics, Actuarial Science,

Finance or a related field.
Minimum Experience

• A minimum of 5 years' experience in developing credit models and tools, statistical modelling and validation in a credit risk management environment.
• Experience in credit management in the banking and/or financial services sectors.
• Good knowledge of data management.
• In-depth knowledge of credit rating methodologies.
• Exposure to credit risk systems, data warehousing or model implementation environments.
• In-depth knowledge of Basel II/III, IFRS 9 and other credit risk regulatory frameworks.
• Demonstrated ability to programme data solutions in SQL, SAS, Python, R, Power BI or similar modelling and analytics tools.

Desirable Requirements

• A Postgraduate Degree in Statistics.
• Experience in a Development Finance institution.

Required Personal Attributes
a) Analytical Thinking

• Analyses and interprets multiple complex causal links: several potential causes of events, several consequences of actions, or multiple-part chains of events in order to prioritise and develop a plan of action.

b) Attention to Detail

• Monitors the quality of others' work.
• Checks to see that procedures are followed by others.
• Keeps clear, detailed records of own and/or others' activities.

c) Integrity

• Takes pride in being trustworthy, serves all equally, respects others and embraces diversity.
• Is honest in all relations (internal/external relations).
• Is capable of challenging senior managementm (appropriately and respectfully) in order to
• act on espoused values.

d) Strategic and Innovative Thinking

• Experiments with new approaches, tests scenarios, questions assumptions and challenges conventional thinking.
• Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others, leveraging internal and external sources of information, to build incremental revenue and growth opportunities.

e) Driving Delivery of Results

• Sets challenging goals that will have a significant impact on the business or support the organisational strategy.
• Commits significant resources and/or time to ensure that challenging goals are achieved, while also taking action to mitigate risk.

f) Teamwork and Cooperation

• Openly praises others who have made contributions to the group's efforts.
• Empowers others, making them feel valued, strong and important.
• Encourages others after a setback.

g) Customer Service Orientation

• Tries to understand the underlying needs of customers and matches these needs to available or customised products and services.
• Adapts processes and procedures to meet ongoing customer needs.
• Utilises the feedback received by customers to develop new and/or improve existing services/ products that relate to their ongoing needs.
• Thinks of new ways to align DBSA's offerings with future customer needs.

Skills Required