Job Summary

The CEO / Country Lead will lead Solv's Kenya operations while driving the development and expansion of the MSME business across East Africa. The role requires a unique blend of strategic leadership, MSME ecosystem expertise, fintech experience, commercial acumen, partnership development, and operational execution. The successful candidate will be responsible for identifying growth opportunities, building strategic partnerships, driving customer acquisition, developing scalable products and financing solutions, and creating a high-performing local team

Key Responsibilities

Business Leadership & Growth

• Develop and execute Solv's Kenya and actively support its East Africa growth strategy.
• Own country P&L and ensure sustainable business growth and profitability.
• Lead the assessment and execution of product and business expansion opportunities
• Build and scale a sustainable MSME business platform.
• Identify new market opportunities, customer segments, and expansion initiatives.
• Drive revenue growth, customer acquisition, and portfolio performance.
• Establish Solv as a leading MSME growth and financing platform within the region.

MSME Ecosystem Development

• Develop deep understanding of MSME customer needs, working capital challenges, and supply chain dynamics.
• Design and scale solutions that improve MSME access to finance, procurement, distribution, and growth opportunities.
• Build ecosystems connecting MSMEs with financial institutions, suppliers, distributors, and business service providers.
• Drive adoption of embedded finance and supply chain financing solutions.

Strategic Partnerships

• Develop and manage strategic partnerships across financial institutions, fintechs, distributors, corporates, industry associations, regulators and ecosystem stakeholders to accelerate growth and expand access to capital, markets and customers.

Product & Innovation Leadership

• Provide strategic direction for the development and enhancement of customer-centric MSME solutions.
• Work cross-functionally with product, technology, risk and operations teams to deliver scalable and commercially viable offerings.

Commercial and Portfolio Management

• Monitor and optimize key business, portfolio and customer performance metrics.
• Monitor portfolio quality and lending performance in collaboration with financing partners.
• Drive customer retention, engagement, and profitability.
• Establish robust performance tracking and reporting mechanisms.

Stakeholder Management

• Represent Solv with investors, regulators, partners, and key external stakeholders.
• Act as the company's primary spokesperson and business leader within Kenya.
• Provide regular strategic updates and market insights into executive leadership.
• Ensure compliance with applicable regulatory requirements, risk standards and governance frameworks.

Risk Management and Governance

• Oversee identification, assessment, management, monitoring, mitigation and reporting of compliance (including regulatory, conduct and financial crime) risks.
• Oversee the formulation of compliance policies and standards for approval by the relevant governing body (as necessary) under the Company’s governance framework.
• Oversee the development of controls for the Company for all risk types as set out in the relevant Risk Management Frameworks.
• Ensure independence, timely responses and escalation of risks and issues where it is felt that risk tolerance of the company is exceeded.
• Lead the regulatory relationships with each of the regulators, whose rules the Company is subject to.
• Ensure that the relevant staff understand and accept their responsibilities in relation to risks, governance and controls.
• Collaborate with other governance, risk, and compliance teams to anticipate horizon risks that may have a significant impact on the Company and support the development of effective strategies to mitigate such horizon risks, including global standards for conduct of business.

Skills and Experience

The successful candidate will be an entrepreneurial and commercially driven leader with a proven ability to build and scale businesses within the MSME, fintech, digital commerce, or financial services ecosystem. They will combine strategic vision with strong execution capabilities, bringing a deep understanding of SME customer needs, working capital challenges, embedded finance, and partnership-driven growth models. They will have a demonstrated track record of leading growth, building high-performing teams, establishing strategic partnerships, and delivering sustainable commercial results in emerging markets.

• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, Finance, Economics, Commerce, Engineering, Technology or a related field.
• 15+ years of leadership experience in fintech, SME banking, embedded finance, digital commerce, lending, supply chain finance, or financial services.
• Proven experience leading and scaling a business unit, country operation, or growth function, with accountability for revenue growth and business performance.
• Strong understanding of MSME financing, working capital solutions, credit ecosystems, and distribution networks.
• Track record of building strategic partnerships and delivering commercial growth.
• Experience managing cross-functional teams in dynamic and fast-growing environments.
• East Africa market experience strongly preferred.

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.