Head of Innovation and Customer Experience

Career with BRAC Tanzania Finance LTD

BRAC Tanzania Finance Limited (BTFL) is the largest Microfinance organization in Tanzania with a mission to responsibly provide a range of financial services to people at the bottom of the pyramid. We particularly focus on women living in poverty in rural and hard-to-reach areas to create self-employment opportunities, build financial resilience, and harness women’s entrepreneurial spirit by empowering them economically.

BRAC Tanzania Finance LTD is seeking applications from competent, dynamic and self-motivated individual to fill up the following position.

The Head of Innovation and Client Experience (HoICex)

The Head of Innovation and Client Experience (HoICex) leads the strategic design, development, and delivery of inclusive, client-centered credit solutions that advance BTFL’s mission to provide responsible, scalable, and high-impact financial services, with special focus on women and youth. The HoICex provides cross-functional leadership across product development, social performance and impact management, digital financial services, communications, strategic partnerships, and knowledge management to ensure cohesive product ecosystems and measurable client outcomes.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Strategic Leadership and Planning
   • Lead creation and implementation of BTFL’s business development strategy, ensuring alignment with the organization’s social mission, strategic plan, and regulatory requirements.
   • Conduct market, customer, and competitive analysis to identify opportunities for new credit products, channels, partnerships, and client segments; convert insights into clear business cases, roadmaps, and measurable KPIs.
   • Champion a culture of human-centered design, experimentation, and data-driven decision making across the business development unit; introduce methods, incentives, and learning cycles that accelerate validated innovation.
   • Develop and institutionalize frameworks, toolkits, and operating standards for inclusive product and service delivery; ensure adoption and compliance across departments.
   • Advise the CEO and senior leadership on emerging trends in digital finance, fintech, credit risk, and regulation, and recommend strategic actions to protect BTFL’s competitiveness and social impact.
2. Product Design and Innovation
   • Oversee the full lifecycle of credit products from ideation, pilot and testing through to review and scale; ensure products remain affordable, responsible, and responsive to diverse client needs with emphasis on women and youth.
   • Lead quantitative and qualitative research, client surveys, and poverty outreach assessments; translate evidence into product features, pricing, delivery channels, and client protection measures.
   • Coordinate product development with field operations, risk, IT, and digital teams to ensure operational feasibility, system integration, and frontline readiness.
   • Establish and manage ongoing product performance reviews to evaluate relevance, client outcomes, operational cost, and profitability; recommend adaptation, scale-up, or phase-out decisions based on data and lessons learned.
3. Digital Financial Services and Transformation
   • Develop and drive BTFL’s DFS roadmap and annual work plans in collaboration with product, operations, IT, risk, and field teams to expand outreach, improve client experience, and lower transaction costs.
   • Lead the scale up of digitalization of field processes and delivery channels to simplify onboarding, payments, monitoring, and collections while safeguarding client access and inclusion.
   • Ensure DFS initiatives explicitly address financial and digital literacy, data privacy, informed consent, accessibility for low-connectivity users, and consumer protection standards.
   • Build and manage partnerships with technology vendors, mobile network operators, and fintech platforms; negotiate service level agreements, oversee integrations, and monitor vendor performance and SLA compliance.
   • Promote adoption of digital tools for data collection, credit decisioning, MIS, and Realtime reporting; track digital channel uptake, user satisfaction, and operational KPIs to guide continuous improvement.
   • Ensure DFS solutions comply with regulatory requirements including KYC, data protection, and consumer protection.
4. Client Impact and Social Performance
   • Implement the Universal Standards for Social and Environmental Performance Management and Client Protection Standards across BTFL’s portfolio to safeguard client wellbeing and institutional integrity.
   • Define and embed outreach and outcome targets for poverty outreach, women and youth inclusion, and resilience in product lifecycles, performance monitoring, and strategic planning.
   • Oversee systematic collection, analysis, and reporting of client impact data and ensure insights are integrated into product design, digital strategy, and external communications.
   • Coordinate with Risk & Compliance, Legal to ensure products, channels, and marketing materials meet ethical standards and regulatory requirements.
   • Promote environmental and social sustainability across operations and align BTFL activities with broader development objectives such as climate resilience and inclusive growth.
5. Strategic Partnerships and Resource Mobilization
   • Identify, secure, and manage partnerships with fintechs, mobile money operators, technical service providers, donor agencies, and industry associations to expand products, reach, and client engagement.
   • Coordinate with BRAC affiliates and external partners to share expertise, digital platforms, and funding for initiatives aligned with BTFL’s strategy.
   • Lead grant and technical assistance fundraising, producing high-quality proposals, budgets, and donor reports with cross-functional input.
   • Negotiate partnership agreements and ensure adherence to contractual terms, donor requirements, and BTFL governance standards.
6. Knowledge Management and Communications
   • Design and maintain a KM system to capture, catalogue, and share lessons learned, case studies, research, and best practices across BTFL.
   • Produce high-quality outputs such as policy briefs, impact reports, blogs, and presentations to showcase innovations and social impact.
   • Promote organizational learning through webinars, peer exchanges, and cross-team collaboration.
   • Lead communications planning and execution to clearly convey BTFL’s mission, activities, and impact to internal and external audiences while upholding brand and client protection standards.
   • Represent BTFL at industry events, conferences, and media engagements in coordination with senior leadership.
7. Cross Functional Coordination and Stakeholder Engagement
   • Work with Head of Operations to ensure new products and digital initiatives are operationally feasible and rollout-ready; coordinate branch training and change management.
   • Collaborate with Finance and Risk aligning pricing, profitability, liquidity, and capital allocation with product and digital strategies.
   • Partner with IT to prioritize systems development, data management, and DFS integration that enable seamless cross-department adoption.
   • Coordinate with HR to design and deliver staff training on product management, digital finance, impact measurement, and communications.
   • Maintain open dialogue with lenders/donors, regulators, and industry groups; advocate for enabling policies and share BTFL’s lessons in responsible, client-centred digital finance.
8. Team Leadership and Talent Management
   • Provide visionary leadership to direct reports; set clear objectives, deliver regular coaching, and conduct performance reviews that support career progression.
   • Hire and onboard high-performing staff; build team capability through targeted training and mentoring.
   • Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and mutual respect.
   • Champion DEI by designing team structures, processes, and development opportunities that ensure meaningful participation of women and underrepresented groups.
9. Reporting and Accountability
   • Prepare periodic reports and presentations for the CEO, board committees, and investors/donors on the progress, challenges, and impact of business development initiatives.
   • Monitor performance against approved budgets, work plans, and KPIs; implement corrective actions where necessary.
   • Ensure timely submission of investors/donor reports, regulatory filings, and other compliance documents.

Safeguarding Responsibilities:

• Ensure the safety of team members from any harm, abuse, neglect, harassment and exploitation to achieve the programme’s goals for safeguarding implementation. Act as a key source of support, guidance and expertise on safeguarding for establishing a safe working environment.
• Practice, promote and endorse the issues of safeguarding policy among team members and ensure the implementation of safeguarding standards in every course of action.
• Follow the safeguarding reporting procedure in case any reportable incident takes place and encourage others to do so.

Educational & Experience Requirements:

• A master’s or bachelor’s degree in business administration or any related field
• At least 7–10 years of progressive experience in inclusive finance, microfinance, product development, digital financial services or related fields, with at least 3 years in a senior leadership role.
• Proven experience in business development, digital financial services, product innovation, or social performance and impact management.
• Demonstrated success in designing and scaling financial products for low-income clients; experience with human-centered design and digital innovation.
• Proven ability to build and manage partnerships with fintech’s, mobile network operators, donors and regulators.

Required Competencies:

• Strong strategic planning, financial analysis and project management skills; ability to translate market insights into actionable plans.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills; ability to represent BTFL to diverse audiences and articulate complex ideas clearly.
• Experience in social performance management and impact measurement; familiarity with the Universal Standards for Social Performance Management.
• High digital literacy and understanding of how technology can advance financial inclusion.
• Commitment to client protection, ethical behavior and gender equity; ability to mentor and motivate diverse teams.

Employment type: Regular

Salary: Negotiable

Job Location: Country Head Office – Dar es Salaam

If you feel you are the right match for the above-mentioned position, please follow the application instructions accordingly:

External candidates need to email their CV with a letter of interest mentioning educational grades, years of experience, current and expected salary at recruitment.tanzania@brac.co.tz

Internal candidates need to apply with their latest CV including all job assignments in detail with BRAC PIN and email to recruitment.tanzania@brac.co.tz

Please mention the name of the position and AD# BTFL 11/2025 in the subject bar.

Only complete applications will be accepted and short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Application deadline: 30 November 2025

BRAC is committed to safeguarding children, young people and adults, and expects all employees and volunteers to share the same commitment. We believe every stakeholder and every member of the communities we work with has the right to be protected from all forms of harm, abuse, neglect, harassment, and exploitation - regardless of age, race, religion, gender, status as an individual with a disability or ethnic origin. Therefore, our recruitment policy and procedure include extensive background checks and disclosure of criminal records in order to ensure safeguarding to the fullest extent.

BRAC is an equal opportunities employer