Collections Manager

FreeStar Financial Credit Union • New Baltimore, MI

8d • Onsite

About The Position

The Repayment Solutions Manager leads FreeStar Financial Credit Union’s collections, loss mitigation, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and operational risk activities. The role is responsible for protecting the credit union while supporting fair and appropriate member outcomes, ensuring compliance with applicable laws, regulations, network rules, and internal policies, and providing leadership, guidance, and professional development to assigned staff.

The manager oversees delinquency management, repayment and hardship solutions, fraud and dispute investigations, mortgage and commercial foreclosures, repossessions, garnishments and levies, legal processes, and recovery activities. The position develops and maintains policies, procedures, internal controls, risk assessments, quality assurance, and reporting. It monitors portfolio performance, fraud trends, emerging risks, and economic conditions; coordinates significant incident response; and communicates material matters and recommendations to senior management and the Board of Directors.

The position is based at the Selfridge Office and follows a Monday through Friday full-time schedule. A high school diploma is required; some college is preferred. Candidates must have at least three years of similar or related experience in the financial industry and working knowledge of relevant laws, regulations, payment-system requirements, and risk areas.

Requirements

• High school diploma required.
• Minimum of three years of similar or related experience in the financial industry.
• Working knowledge of laws, regulations, and requirements applicable to collections, lending, servicing, electronic funds transfers, disputes, privacy, credit reporting, debt collection, bankruptcy, repossession, foreclosure, garnishments, levies, fraud prevention, identity theft, information security, and the Bank Secrecy Act.
• Understanding of applicable card-network and payment-system rules.
• Ability to remain current on regulatory and legal developments affecting assigned functions.

Nice To Haves

• Some college preferred.

Responsibilities

• Monitor paid-ahead loans monthly.
• Oversee delinquency management and timely, consistent follow-up on delinquent, high-balance, and overdrawn accounts through approved communication channels.
• Segment accounts by risk and circumstances, assign appropriate collection treatments, and ensure member interactions are professional, accurate, and compliant.
• Ensure members with high-balance or delinquent accounts are contacted to understand the cause of delinquency, assess repayment capacity and willingness, and identify resolution options.
• Oversee payment arrangements, modifications, settlements, hardship solutions, and other workout plans within approved authority, with required documentation, approvals, and monitoring.
• Oversee fraud prevention, detection, investigation, and recovery, including debit card and electronic funds transfer disputes; ensure cases are documented and resolved within applicable timeframes.
• Establish escalation protocols for significant incidents, repeat offenders, internal control concerns, and matters requiring legal, insurance, law enforcement, or senior management involvement.
• Review delinquent mortgage loans, identify foreclosure-avoidance solutions, and negotiate with homeowners and real estate agents to increase potential savings to the credit union.
• Lead responses to significant fraud and operational risk events, coordinating containment, investigation, member remediation, evidence preservation, recovery, insurance notifications, and communications with relevant parties.
• Complete root-cause analyses and ensure corrective actions are assigned, tracked, and validated.
• Ensure thorough records for loss mitigation cases, including modified loan details, proposed resolutions, management approvals, member correspondence, and file analysis.
• Develop, implement, evaluate, and update policies and procedures for collections, loss mitigation, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and operational risk management.
• Establish internal controls, approval authorities, segregation of duties, quality assurance reviews, and escalation requirements.
• Conduct and maintain periodic fraud risk assessments and recommend control enhancements based on vulnerabilities, loss trends, regulatory guidance, and emerging schemes.
• Monitor legal, regulatory, regulatory-guidance, card-network, and other requirements affecting assigned functions; coordinate updates to policies, procedures, systems, forms, notices, training, and monitoring before effective dates.
• Prepare and follow through on small-claims and other legal processes for Courtesy Pay, overdrawn accounts, fraud, and loan losses, including court appearances.
• Determine when loan collateral should be repossessed and liaise with attorneys or agencies handling repossessions.
• Oversee processing of garnishments and levies.
• Evaluate fraud and operational risk associated with collection agencies, repossession vendors, attorneys, payment processors, card networks, fraud-monitoring providers, and other third parties; participate in due diligence, contract review, performance monitoring, escalation, and remediation.
• Keep appropriate senior management informed of material collection, loss mitigation, fraud, dispute, and operational risk matters; promptly escalate significant losses, regulatory concerns, control failures, litigation exposure, emerging schemes, adverse portfolio trends, and other material events.
• Develop timely and accurate reporting on delinquency, charge-offs, recoveries, bankruptcies, repossessions, foreclosures, modifications, fraud losses, disputes, control exceptions, and emerging risks; analyze results and present trends, causes, corrective actions, and recommendations to senior management and the Board of Directors.
• Establish and monitor fraud and risk indicators, and use trend analysis to adjust prevention strategies, staffing, system rules, transaction limits, and member education.
• Coordinate and handle mortgage and commercial lending foreclosures, including preparing and processing mortgage insurance claims on defaulted real estate loans, as applicable.
• Maintain OREO (Other Real Estate Owned) properties for real estate lending and commercial lending.
• Establish and oversee quality assurance, case-review, and control-testing standards for collections, loss mitigation, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and recovery activities.
• Ensure exceptions are documented, reported, remediated, and used to improve procedures, training, system configuration, and management oversight.
• Coordinate with Compliance and Internal Audit while maintaining appropriate independence between operational ownership and independent assurance functions.
• Provide leadership, guidance, and professional development to assigned staff.

Benefits

• Four weeks of PTO available in the first year.
• 401(k) with up to a 6% match.
• Up to a 5% year-end bonus.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: High school or GED