Principal, Risk Manager - Residential Real Estate (AASP)

Apollo • New York, NY

9d • Remote

About The Position

AASP Risk (AASP) manages securitized products and structured finance assets sourced and serviced by ATLAS SP Partners and Apollo’s Asset Backed Lending business, serving as the dedicated risk management team. AASP is seeking a Principal to be the lead risk manager for the residential mortgage warehouse portfolio across all asset-backed lending activities. This role involves conducting asset-level and counterparty-level credit reviews, evaluating fraud, reputational, and collateral/security considerations, and continuously monitoring residential mortgage finance exposures. Reporting to the co-heads of Asset Backed Finance Risk Management, this Principal will collaborate with ATLAS and Apollo credit professionals, other AASP Risk team leaders, clients, and key partners. The role requires owning end-to-end portfolio risk, including transaction analysis, early risk identification, challenging deal teams, developing expertise in various asset classes, forming an independent risk view, and writing succinct risk memos. This individual will be a self-sufficient risk manager, acting as a critical control function to protect capital and assess downside risks. The ideal candidate will have experience as a Credit Risk Officer in a decision-making capacity for mortgage and asset-backed financing transactions, comfortable challenging the status quo and establishing operational guardrails. Product expertise in residential mortgage collateral, including agency, non-qualified mortgages, business purpose loans, single family rental, HELOC, closed-end seconds, MSRs, and servicer advances, is essential. Responsibilities include reviewing and assessing new and existing transactions, facility amendments, renewal requests, and monitoring ongoing credit quality.

Requirements

• Strong subject matter knowledge of multiple asset classes in the consumer and commercial sectors, including unsecured consumer, renewables, credit cards, student loans.
• Exposure to more bespoke or less liquid asset classes (venture debt, SME lending, fund finance) is highly beneficial
• Prior experience as an approver of credit
• Experience underwriting Corporates from a fundamental credit perspective
• Experience reviewing loan agreements
• Prior experience and responsibility for critical decisions of significant financial impact and complex criteria is a main requirement
• Ability to roll-up sleeves and work alongside 1LOD to underwrite highly structured warehouse (loan) facilities
• Strong foundation in risk while also very solution-oriented with a thorough understanding of the commercial needs of a business, especially one in a growth stage, but know how to balance that with risk discipline and control
• Strong analytical skills, multi-asset class experience, and an ability to build risk management tools to aid in governing the risk in the portfolio
• Extensive financial analysis and modelling skills, expertise in credit risk management, and strong understanding of risk metrics/models/systems
• Understanding of fundamental credit skills, ideally having spent time in a large bank or financial institution with structured credit training programs
• Exceptional attention to detail
• Must have exceptional communication skills, both written and verbal and be comfortable presenting prospective deals to investment committee(s)
• Must be able to communicate complex risk-related concepts to both internal and external parties
• Ability to incorporate and understand information from variety of sources to stay ahead of market/economic trends and evaluate the impact on the portfolio

Nice To Haves

• Product expertise is required for this role. Residential mortgage collateral includes but is not limited to agency, non-qualified mortgages, business purpose (or investor) loans, single family rental, HELOC and closed end seconds, mortgage servicing rights and servicer advances.

Responsibilities

• Underwrite risk in each transaction, including evaluating the financing structures, asset risk, the risk profile of the originators and servicers, reputational risks, collateral control risks, stress testing and analytics as well as gathering market intelligence
• Accountable for making risk decisions; act like an investor to approve transactions within a delegated level of authority
• Demonstrate an ability to challenge the business (sales/portfolio/structuring teams), substantiate support or dissent for a deal and where there is dissent, work with the deal team on structural improvements which might move a transaction from “no” to “maybe/yes”
• Participate in the deal underwriting process from inception and be involved over the lifecycle of a transaction, with greater involvement should asset classes be underperforming, higher risk, less liquid, more esoteric, etc.
• Work with Legal and the deal teams on the loan agreements to ensure that documents accurately reflect the deal structure, economic terms and asset waterfalls
• Work closely with other control function partners including i) Legal, Due Diligence, and Compliance to escalate and review any reputational or franchise risk considerations including fraud and double pledging risk and ii) Treasury to evaluate any liability or liquidity considerations.
• Present risk concerns and due diligence findings, make a risk recommendation and answer questions of Investment Committee members or other senior stakeholders
• Produce documentation which includes thorough market, borrower, structure, and collateral analysis to support recommendation. This would include but not be limited to understanding and sensitizing stress testing analysis provided by the business and/or obtaining other market intelligence to support risk conclusions and considerations.

Benefits

• Discretionary annual bonus based on personal, team, and Firm performance.
• Invest in our people for the long term and are committed to supporting their development at every stage of their career.
• Learn from some of the smartest problem-solvers in the world to build your career and make your mark on the future of finance.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed