Credit Lead - UAE
Role overview
What is FlapKap ? FlapKap is a data-driven fintech lender providing short-term working capital to SMEs in the UAE. We underwrite businesses on their financial health and cash flow dynamics rather than traditional collateral-based criteria, using AI-powered credit models built in-house. We lend across three products: • POS Financing — installment facilities for B2C merchants with significant card-based revenue • Short Term Loan (STL) — working capital facilities for B2B trading, service and manufacturing SMEs • Invoice Discounting (ID) — advances against approved receivables from verified debtors
What will you do ? You'll be the senior underwriter on the Credit team — the person who takes the hardest files, forms a view, and defends it in the Investment Committee. Alongside the day-to-day book, you'll own how we decide: refining the credit models and rewriting the policy criteria as the portfolio teaches us what actually predicts default.
This is a senior individual contributor role. You won't manage a team, but your calls will set the standard the analysts underwrite to, and your recommendations will shape the policy the whole company lends under.
Responsibilities: Underwriting and credit decisions
• Underwrite POS, STL and ID applications end to end; assess capacity and willingness to repay; assign risk ratings through our product-specific credit models • Interrogate AECB reports against bank statements and facility letters • Present cases to Investment Committee with a clear recommendation, structure and conditions; own the outcome • Handle enhanced-review files • Structure security and conditions appropriately • Review appeals and exception requests from the commercial team on their merits, and hold the line when the merits aren't there
Credit model and policy development
• Analyse portfolio performance to find where our criteria are wrong — which thresholds reject good businesses, which let bad ones through • Recalibrate scorecards and rating logic across all three products; propose and document policy amendments for approval • Build the analysis that justifies changes to exposure caps, pricing bands, refinancing thresholds and eligibility criteria • Work with product and engineering to translate policy into automated pre-screening rules on the platform • Track and report on cohort performance, early warning indicators, and the accuracy of our own risk ratings against realised outcomes
Requirements • 4–6 years in SME credit — UAE bank SME lending, or a fintech / non-bank lender • Hands-on underwriting experience with SME files: bank statement analysis, VAT reconciliation, ageing reports, financial spreading • Working knowledge of the UAE credit infrastructure: AECB, trade licenses, Ejari, VAT filings, cheque-based security and the practical realities of enforcement here • Strong AI skills - good knowledge of how models work and experience in using them to create value to the credit team • The judgement to say no to a commercial team that wants a yes, and the analysis to explain why
Nice to have
• Exposure to invoice discounting or receivables finance, including debtor verification • Scorecard development or credit model validation experience • Familiarity with automated decisioning and the tradeoffs between rules-based and model-based approval What success looks like • 3 months — underwriting independently across all three products, taking your own decisions and reviewing cases of more junior employees • 6 months — you've identified at least two policy criteria that don't hold up against portfolio data and proposed evidence-backed changes • 12 months — the credit models are measurably better calibrated on your work, and rating-to-outcome accuracy has improved
Benefits • Competitive Salaries • Paid time off • Healthcare coverage • A highly collaborative team environment that will support your professional and personal growth • A culture that promotes Work-Life balance and Wellbeing • A culture of learning and innovation
