Director - Research & Consulting - TransUnion - Chicago

Job description

Dynamics of the Role
The Director of Financial Services Research and Consulting is a senior leader and a key contributor to the perception of TransUnion in the marketplace as an authority on lending dynamics. We are looking for a seasoned subject matter expert with mastery of a wide range of consumer lending industry practices, products and functions through the entire customer life cycle. This role drives thought leadership in two ways: first, the incumbent manages sophisticated research initiatives aimed at understanding why consumers behave the way they do with credit, what external forces influence that behavior and what lenders need to know to manage the risks and opportunities associated with that behavior. Second, this role provides critical assistance to the Sales Team in presenting advanced concepts to customers, and in exploring customer challenges across products/business units/functions. This role serves as a consumer lending product, industry and business process expert for the sales force and for our customers. In short, you motivate our customers to see us as a trusted partner instead of a vendor.

The Team’s Focus

Beyond the traditional business of furnishing credit reports for consumer lending, TransUnion Financial Services provides financial institutions with data and solutions to better manage customer relationships. We have a large, diverse client base ranging from top financial institutions to credit unions, in markets that range from mature to emerging. We offer a broad array of products customized to each aspect of our clients’ business: credit risk management, marketing segmentation, fraud and ID management, collections and credit decisioning. We pride ourselves on our ability to bring innovative ideas and solutions to market, leveraging our extensive experience in credit data and analytics. Our team represents a dynamic blend of financial services industry experience and credit expertise.

How You’ll Contribute:

•As an authority on consumer credit, you will drive research and analysis projects around complex market dynamics, including ideation, study design, results analysis and final publication.
•You will evaluate those dynamics and their impact on customer needs, and translate those insights into actionable strategies and revenue-generating solution sets.
•You will speak eloquently on behalf of TransUnion to share our insights at both our own conferences and at 3rd-party industry events.
•You will drive our thought leadership more broadly as a TransUnion spokesperson to print, radio and television media outlets.
•You will author articles based on our research for publication in industry-specific journals.
•You will support our sales teams through consulting as a lending industry expert, helping our clients identify and address emerging challenges and opportunities in the marketplace.
•You will help educate our sales teams on consumer lending concepts, including consumer behavior dynamics, regulatory issues, economic forces, risk and marketing drivers, and more. You will support the development of- and lead efforts to improve sales fluency and sophistication when discussing industry concepts and trends across a range of lending concepts and functions.
•You will represent qualified expertise and immediate credibility on joint sales calls with acceptance as the subject matter expert, quotable resource and as the acknowledged industry consultant. In doing so, you will establish strong customer relationships built on trust, credibility, integrity, mutual respect and a sense of shared purpose.
•You will attend various industry association functions and seminars to maintain your knowledge of industry trends, best practices and competitive product offerings. By staying abreast of industry changes, you will maintain your own expertise in our dynamic industry. You will also educate/inform both internal TransUnion management and also our customers regarding the impact of industry dynamics on customers and TransUnion clients.
•Through all these efforts, you will drive the sense of TransUnion as an authority on lending dynamics and a worthwhile, trusted partner to our clients and prospects.

Desired Skills and Experience
What You’ll Bring:

•You will draw on your extensive experience in consumer lending to drive thought leadership initiatives.
•You are highly credentialed, with several years of experience in increasingly senior roles at multiple financial institutions and/or consulting firms.
•You are also highly educated, with an advanced degree in business, statistics, operations research, finance, banking, or another related field.
•You have an innate, unquenchable curiosity to understand why consumers behave the way they do.
•You have tenacity—finding the answer to a difficult question is a challenge you enjoy.
•You do not let obstacles hinder you; rather, you find innovative approaches to resolve, overcome or otherwise avoid those obstacles.
•You are a senior leader and can drive complex projects with minimal supervision.
•You are adept at managing a team of contributors to an initiative and maintaining their enthusiasm, even when they don’t report to you.
•You are comfortable in the role of a mentor, training junior analysts how to think about the consumer lending business and how to tackle complex questions analytically and systematically.
•You are skilled at evaluating data and summary statistics to find the underlying insights, and to guide a research project in the most fruitful direction. It is a big plus if you can actually perform analysis yourself, with experience manipulating large datasets using SAS, R, or other analytical software.
•You are an expert with the Microsoft Office product suite, particularly Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
•You are an eloquent speaker, equally comfortable addressing an audience of 4, 40 or 400.
•You have a great sense of the BUSINESS QUESTION. You realize that data must be transformed into business intelligence to be meaningful.
•You are comfortable discussing concepts at all levels of an organization, from entry-level analyst to CEO. You have the ability to tailor your conversational approach to the audience—technical where you need to be, and strategic where appropriate, but always aimed at answering the business question.
•You have a strong customer service orientation. You mean it when you ask, “How can I be of service?” You recognize that internal customers are as important as external customers.

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