Group Product Manager - Digital Lending

AnaVation LLC; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - GBP 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A financial services organization in the UK seeks a Group Product Manager to spearhead the digital product strategy for credit analysis. This role involves leading a team, driving innovation in decision support, and building collaborative relationships across Credit, Risk, and Tech teams. Ideal candidates will have extensive experience in a regulated financial environment, outstanding leadership qualities, and a track record in successfully implementing transformative credit analysis processes. Flexible work arrangements are offered to support work-life balance.

Benefits

25 days holiday plus bank holidays

Competitive salary & equity

Flexible work from home

Cycle to work & EV scheme

Company socials and team events

Qualifications

• Experience in leading digitization of credit analysis in regulated environments.
• Ability to manage and develop product managers effectively.
• Expertise in transforming and implementing new credit analysis processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead digital product strategy for credit decisioning.
• Manage and mentor a team of product managers.
• Build partnerships with credit and tech teams to improve outcomes.

Skills

Product strategy for digital credit analysis

Delivery of meaningful change

Deep partnership with Credit, Risk, and Lending stakeholders

Product leadership and team management

Discovery, decision-making, and prioritisation

Technology, data, and AI in credit analysis

Education

Senior product leader experience in digitizing credit analysis

Tools

Data analysis tools

Automation systems

AI technologies

Job description

Overview

At OakNorth, we’re on a mission to empower the UK’s most ambitious businesses. Since 2015, we’ve lent over $18 billion across the UK and US, helped create more than 58,000 new homes and 36,000 new jobs, and supported hundreds of thousands of personal savers — all while fuelling the UK economy.

The Role

The Role 👋

We are looking for a Group Product Manager to lead digital product strategy and execution for credit analysis and decisioning at OakNorth.

This product leadership role reports to the Director of Lending Product, and will be a 'player-coach' managing 1-2 senior and mid-level Product Managers, as well taking on responsibility for key projects. You will be accountable for shaping the vision, roadmap, and outcomes for how credit analysis is performed, supported, and scaled through technology at OakNorth.

Credit analysis is at the core of OakNorth’s lending proposition—and one of the most complex, specialist, and high-stakes areas of the business. This role exists to fundamentally change how credit decisions are supported, not just by delivering software, but by embedding new ways of working across the Credit Analysis function.

You will lead a transformation that balances deep credit expertise, regulatory expectations, and operational reality with what best-in-class digital credit analysis looks like today—and what it needs to become tomorrow.

What we're looking for

• Product strategy for digital credit analysis
• Own the end-to-end product strategy for the digitisation of credit analysis.
• Define a clear, credible vision for how technology should support better, faster, and more consistent credit decisions—grounded in real-world delivery experience.
• Translate OakNorth’s lending strategy, risk appetite, and regulatory constraints into a coherent product roadmap with clear outcomes.
• Continuously assess what “best in class” looks like in digital credit analysis—and ensure OakNorth is moving decisively in that direction.

• Delivery of meaningful, adopted change
• Lead the delivery of complex product initiatives that materially change how credit analysis is performed day to day.
• Ensure solutions are not only built and shipped, but successfully adopted, embedded, and trusted by Credit Analysts and wider lending teams.
• Balance innovation with pragmatism—knowing when to push for step-change improvement and when incremental progress is the right path.
• Take accountability for outcomes, not just outputs, including efficiency, quality, consistency, and user confidence.

• Deep partnership with Credit, Risk, and Lending stakeholders
• Act as the senior product partner to the Credit Analyst function—an expert, demanding, and high-credibility stakeholder group.
• Build strong, trust-based relationships with Credit, Risk, Operations, Engineering, Data, and Compliance leaders.
• Navigate challenge and resistance constructively, using evidence, delivery track record, and clarity of vision to drive alignment.
• Ensure product decisions are well-informed by credit expertise without being captured by legacy ways of working.

• Product leadership and team management
• Line manage and develop a team of senior and mid-level Product Managers, setting clear expectations, priorities, and accountability.
• Coach product managers to operate effectively in complex, regulated, expert-driven domains.
• Establish strong product management standards across discovery, prioritisation, delivery, and measurement.
• Ensure teams are focused on the highest-impact problems, with clear success metrics and ownership.

• Discovery, decision-making, and prioritisation
• Ensure discovery is purposeful, decision-led, and proportionate to risk and complexity.
• Use a combination of qualitative insight, quantitative data, and domain expertise to inform prioritisation and trade-offs.
• Make—and stand behind—hard decisions, including stopping, simplifying, or reshaping work that does not deliver sufficient value.
• Maintain a relentless focus on solving the right problems, not just delivering requested features.

• Technology, data, and AI in credit analysis
• Lead the application of data, automation, and AI to improve credit analysis quality, consistency, and efficiency.
• Ensure emerging technologies are applied responsibly, transparently, and within regulatory and model-risk constraints.
• Work closely with Engineering and Data teams to ensure solutions are scalable, explainable, and operationally robust.
• Anchor innovation to real improvements in analyst decision-making and confidence—not novelty.

What success looks like

• Analysts can complete high-quality analysis more efficiently, with better tooling, clearer information, and stronger decision support.
• Digital credit analysis capabilities are actively used, trusted, and embedded in day-to-day underwriting.
• Product teams are delivering consistently against a clear strategy, with strong alignment across Credit, Risk, and Technology, that pushes the ambition and scope of our credit analysis capabilities.
• Stakeholders see product as a driver of change and improvement, not just a delivery function.
• The roadmap is credible, outcome-focused, and demonstrably improving lending performance.
• Product leaders in the team are stronger, more confident, and operating with greater autonomy and impact.

About you

• You are a senior product leader with deep experience in digitising credit analysis or underwriting in complex, regulated environments.
• You have personally led the digitisation of credit analysis, underwriting, or decision support in a bank, fintech, or leading-edge lending organisation.
• You understand what best-in-class digital credit analysis looks like—and have delivered it in practice, not just in theory.
• You are comfortable operating in high-challenge environments with strong opinions, deep expertise, and real risk.
• You can set a bold product vision and also get into the detail when credibility and delivery require it.
• You have led and developed other product managers, creating clarity, accountability, and momentum.
• You are outcomes-driven, resilient, and highly self-motivated.
• You know that real transformation is as much about adoption and behaviour change as it is about technology.
• You can influence senior stakeholders through clarity, evidence, and delivery track record—and are willing to challenge constructively when needed.

What makes working here better

• This is a truly hybrid role, offering engineers and product the flexibility to work from home while also providing opportunities to collaborate in person with the team when it adds value. There’s no fixed requirement for days in the office, instead, we focus on creating space for engineers & product to engage meaningfully, whether that’s in-person for whiteboarding sessions or remote for deep focus work.
• Work-life balance - 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays) each year, and enhanced family leave allowances.
• Competitive salary & equity - We want people to have a serious stake in the business.
• Good kit - Your choice of the best laptop, running macOS or Ubuntu.
• Team socials - The opportunity to get to know each other outside of work.
• Company socials - A chance to catch up and meet new colleagues weekly over informal office breakfasts and dinners on OakNorth - or at our free barista bar every day.
• Commuter support - We offer the cycle to work & EV scheme.