Full-Time Strategy Associate
Job Description
iwoca started in 2012 and was born out of the frustration that small businesses lack the access to finance they need to reach their potential. Our belief then was that technology must enable us to significantly shorten the archaic 8-week bank application process which more often than not results in a ‘no’. Nearly a decade later and we have served more than 50,000 businesses across the UK and Germany with more than £2 billion of finance. Our personal best from a business starting an application to money in the bank is 3m26s (faster than Mo Farah on 1,500 meters).
It’s a good start, but it’s just the beginning. Our mission is to finance 1 million businesses, so still, a long way to go.
It’s full of creativity, passion and ambition under our hood and there is oodles of stuff left to do. We are looking for people who bring diversity of thought and experience, have a passion for tackling big problems and want to build meaningful products and services for small businesses. If that’s you, then read on.
Strategy at iwoca helps chart the course of the business, working directly with our CEO and the broader leadership team. This is an opportunity to crack Board-level strategic questions, as well as get your hands dirty helping improve the solutions we offer to business customers. We’re building a world-class strategy engine to help us make the best decisions and take our business to the next level.
Requirements
We’re looking for someone who brings really smart, strategic thinking as well as some delivery muscle to help accelerate our progress towards achieving our company goals. In this role, you’ll be the right hand of our head of strategy and work closely with our CEO and the wider leadership team. You’ll be well-networked across our entire business and lead key strategic work streams that help to drive our success.
Here are some examples of the type of work you will do:
- Play a key role in developing iwoca’s group strategy, leading key activities and engaging with senior leaders and teams across the business to identify new opportunities. You’ll help embed it across the business by living the strategy, running engagement workshops with various teams and supporting Board communications
- Play a key role in identifying and evaluating strategic opportunities (which might be new growth areas, efficiency initiatives or something else), and develop robust and well thought through business proposals, translating concepts or ideas into considered, impactful plans
- Build and own a systematic market-scanning engine to identify and evaluate new growth opportunities that align with iwoca’s strategy, capabilities and growth ambitions
- Build the process for how we set company-wide goals, how we set objectives that will achieve them, and how we track and communicate progress towards those goals to various stakeholders (including the Board)
- Contribute to managing key projects, such as Board meeting prep, OKR shepherding and leading the delivery and upkeep of the company handbook
- Tackle ad hoc requests from the CEO and senior leaders, large and small. As iwoca grows, projects will come up that are important but are under-resourced. You’ll jump in and use your generalist skills to fix grammatical errors in the company handbook, fine tune any company or internal communications, build a financial model all in the same day based on what is important or top of mind for the CEO at a given point.
What we’re looking for:-
- Strong experience (4-7 years) in developing strategies and embedding those to drive game-changing performance
- Experience in (business) lending, fintech or a demonstrable keen interest and knowledge of the sector
- An impeccable academic background, and proven experience from a Tier 1 banking or strategy consulting firm (or similar in-house role)
- Excellent understanding of what drives commercial value, and how to use data to assess commercial performance
- Superb analytical skills (we live, breathe and sleep data) and a desire to spot, break down and resolve problems
- Driven, hard-working and uncompromising in delivering high quality work in tight timelines
- Exceptional levels of personal integrity, given you’ll be exposed to a number of commercially and strategically sensitive projects
- Desire to work in a scale-up environment. We’re not quite a start-up any more, and we’re not even close to a big corporate. We’re growing quickly, which means lots of opportunities and also regular change
- Excited about helping small businesses thrive – belief in our mission is important!
In return, you’ll get a say in how things are done, the opportunity to make a difference to small business owners, and to work on big and challenging projects.
We work hard to make iwoca a place where everyone feels welcome, where you can confidently be yourself. We understand that diversity isn’t an optional add-on, it’s the core ingredient of what makes us great.
Benefits
What’s life like as an iwocan?
We all enjoy:
- Bright, modern office spaces in Covent Garden & Leeds. We have always supported flexible working however during the current pandemic the majority of iwocans are working from home. We have taken every precaution to keep our offices COVID-19 secure for those that need to use them.
- A calendar of ‘remote friendly’ events each week including Bingo, Comedy Nights, Escape Room challenges
- Two company retreats a year (in places like the French Alps or Spanish seaside)
- Pool, ping pong, foosball tables and tournaments
- Virtual Yoga classes every Tuesday and Thursday morning
- An ever-growing number of clubs including climbing, chess, football and boxing
- Plenty of drinks and snacks in our office kitchen
Just for you:
- Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership
- We take your well being incredibly seriously, so you’ll have instant access to emotional and mental health support services via our partner Spill
- Share options
- Enhanced maternity and shared parental leave
- A workplace nursery tax benefit scheme. Save £££ on your nursery costs.
- 25 days holiday per year and an extra day off on your birthday
- All the equipment you need to set up your home working space up
- Paid volunteering time for you to support your chosen charity
- Bring your dog to work days, we’re dog friendly on Tuesday and Thursdays in our London office.
- Extra leave if you want to travel or study
- Special celebrations for anniversaries and long service including sabbatical
- Flexible working arrangements
- Cycle-to-work scheme
And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer:
- L&D budget including a book budget to encourage you to keep learning
- Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers
- A calendar of meetups we host at our office
- Access to learning platforms like Treehouse if you want to learn to code.
How to Apply
Please apply via this link: https://apply.workable.com/iwoca/j/EAEDA92D50/447 total views, 0 today