Aaron Macdonald

Currently responsible for a team of 7 direct reports and the delivery of Risk and Pricing change plans across Admiral Group’s Fintech entity, Admiral Money.

Key Responsibilities:

• Regularly amending the business’ decisioning platform using several code languages such as Oracle, xPath, Python, Javascript and XSLT
• Direct management of 7 employees including regular 1-1s, annual appraisals, development plans and ongoing coaching. Proactively driving and fostering an agile and collaborative environment
• Leading on transformational and strategic projects such as platform migration and restructuring
• Acting as a key facilitator with stakeholders across the business, including Technology, Product, Pricing, Credit Strategy, and Risk squads, using tools such as Jira and Confluence to collaborate effectively and translate business needs into technical outcomes
• Generally acting as SME for the business’ decisioning platform and being the primary point of contact for queries and challenges from stakeholders across the business
• Forecasting and strategic planning for future projects and changes to ensure a continuous proactive approach
• Proactively monitoring and refining existing integrations to ensure minimal technical debt
• Onboarding and nurturing relationships with third party partners such as credit reference agencies and software development businesses
• Working across two product verticals within the business including unsecured personal loans and motor finance

Key Achievements:

• Won ‘Risky Business’ Award for successfully leading on a platform migration project
• Created, nurtured and developed a brand-new team in the business which I now manage
• Successfully built new integrations of new products within the business

• Proactively improved streamline workflows and processes
• Ensured system functioning align to the business’ long-term goals and objectives
• Extracted, analysed and presented data to stakeholders whilst providing recommendations
• Assessed collateral and other credit risk factors to determine unsecured and secured loan eligibility

• Calculated and interpreted financial ratios to identify potential threats and opportunities
• Developed credit recommendations with clear justifications
• Assessed individual and business credit to justify loan eligibility
• Credit analysis and provided general support to wider Credit Risk department

• Worked closely with the Senior Leadership team to proactively propose potential improvements to the business’ pricing structure
• Data analysis to identify trends in customer behaviour and potentially fraudulent activity
• Run pricing models using statistical tools such as SQL, Excel and SAS

• Worked collaboratively with test engineers to develop effective strategies and test plans
• Proactively update testing documents to identify system errors and trends
• Escalated errors to development team, following up on requests until resolved