The Vice President of Underwriting will architect, scale, and continuously optimize the company’s underwriting strategy across merchant acquiring. This senior leader will balance growth acceleration with disciplined risk management, leveraging data, automation, and advanced analytics to drive profitable portfolio expansion while safeguarding the enterprise from credit, fraud, regulatory, and reputational risk.
This role requires a commercially minded risk leader who can translate macro risk trends, regulatory expectations, and portfolio performance data into actionable underwriting frameworks that enable responsible growth.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Leadership
- Define and execute a forward-looking underwriting strategy aligned to corporate growth targets, risk appetite, and capital efficiency objectives.
- Establish and maintain dynamic risk tolerance frameworks segmented by vertical, channel, and product type.
- Partner with Sales, Product, Finance, and Compliance to embed risk-adjusted decisioning into go-to-market strategy.
Portfolio & Credit Risk Management
- Oversee end-to-end merchant underwriting across SMB, mid-market, and enterprise segments.
- Develop and maintain underwriting policy, exception governance, and escalation protocols.
- Monitor portfolio performance metrics (loss rates, chargeback exposure, fraud indicators, concentration risk) and proactively recalibrate underwriting criteria.
- Support with the implementation of predictive modeling and machine learning capabilities to enhance risk scoring and pricing precision.
Operational Excellence
- Drive underwriting automation and straight-through processing to improve speed-to-decision while preserving control integrity.
- Optimize workflow design, capacity planning, and service-level standards to support scalable growth.
- Build robust QA and second-line review mechanisms to ensure policy adherence and regulatory compliance.
Risk & Regulatory Governance
- Ensure underwriting practices comply with card brand rules, sponsor bank requirements, AML/BSA standards, and applicable state and federal regulations.
- Maintain strong documentation, audit trails, and defensible decision frameworks.
- Serve as primary underwriting liaison during regulatory exams, sponsor bank reviews, and internal audits.
Data & Technology Enablement
- Champion data-driven decisioning, including integration of alternative data sources and third-party risk intelligence tools.
- Collaborate with Technology and Data teams to modernize underwriting systems and reduce manual friction points.
- Leverage analytics to identify emerging industry risk trends and proactively adjust exposure.
People & Leadership
- Recruit, develop, and retain high-performing underwriting and risk professionals.
- Establish a culture of accountability, analytical rigor, and commercial partnership.
- Create clear performance KPIs tied to portfolio outcomes and operational efficiency.
Qualifications & Experience
- 10+ years of progressive underwriting or credit risk leadership experience within payments, fintech, merchant acquiring, or financial services.
- Deep expertise in merchant risk, card-not-present exposure, chargeback management, fraud typologies, and high-risk vertical underwriting.
- Demonstrated experience scaling underwriting functions in high-growth environments.
- Strong knowledge of card network rules, sponsor bank frameworks, AML/BSA expectations, and regulatory risk management principles.
- Proven track record of leveraging analytics, automation, and technology to modernize risk operations.
- Executive-level communication skills with the ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders and board-level audiences.
Impact
This role is critical to building a resilient, scalable payments platform capable of accelerating merchant acquisition without compromising enterprise integrity. The VP of Underwriting will function as both growth enabler and risk guardian, ensuring the organization remains agile, compliant, and competitively positioned in an evolving payments landscape.