Our client is a venture-backed fintech with a mission to give employees instant access to their earned wages, which solves a major problem for real people, while killing predatory financial products like payday loans. They are the fastest-growing startup in the category and were incubated by QED Capital, a top fintech venture fund.

Their Instant Pay app provides earned wage access for employees at mid- to large-sized organisations to improve their financial wellness and to increase employee engagement and productivity.

With many workers living paycheck to paycheck, financial wellness tools are an important part of any employee benefits package. Our client gives employees access to the money that they have already earned whenever they need or want it, without needing to wait for the month-end paycheck.; The service is mobile app-based, very easy and intuitive to use. There’s a small transaction fee and no interest to pay, a much healthier solution than payday loans or bank overdrafts with their exorbitant charges.

Our client’s ultimate mission is to help people attain financial freedom, which starts with giving people full control over their income. 

ABOUT THE ROLE:

Our client’s ambition is a rapid rollout of its services across Europe, starting with markets of greatest need and opportunity. This role will take the lead on holistic evaluation of European markets, their prioritisation for launch, and creation of a repeatable “launch playbook” - from market / customer / competitor evaluation to staggered entry activities across marketing, product, hiring, legal, etc.

A major aspect of their go-to-market strategy and activities will be evaluation, creation, maintenance and leverating of appropriate strategic partnerships, incl. with providers of key financial and regulatory infrastructure essential for launch and scaling. This role will take the lead on all aspects of these strategic partnerships.

European expansion is one of the principal value creation drivers for the business. Accordingly, this role is highly strategic, highly visible (reporting to and working very closely with CEO Europe), carries significant responsibility and provides the Director with a unique opportunity to make an outsized positive impact on a young and quickly scaling business.

The ideal candidate will embrace the team’s global culture, which is rooted in Shokunin - the Japanese philosophy of giving your very best for the general welfare of people. The company’s other core values are radical transparency and zero ego.

SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES

● Create a logical approach to evaluating European markets for sequence of Rain’s market entry, carry out all the necessary research to give the plan the required fact-base and substantiation. As appropriate leverage public information, carry out primary research, work with third-party information and research providers

● Translate research findings and its roadmap conclusions into quantified scaling-up plans for the European business. Partner with Finance, Product and other functional leaders to arrive at expansion plans and roadmaps that are well-understood, well-substantiated and add up to scaling that delivers to our business objectives

● Take the lead on early market entry activities - from competitor and customer understanding to organisational planning to supplier/partner identification

● Codify market entry decisions and activities in a repeatable “playbook” that we can leverage and refine with each subsequent launch

● Take the lead on existing and new key strategic relationships with providers of regulatory infrastructure that enable and accelerate our business’s launch in various geographies. Play point on researching, negotiating, reviewing, updating and managing these relationships, incl. their respective economics. Partner with Europe CEO and global leaders intensively, while always remaining the primary point of contact

WORK EXPERIENCE AND REQUIREMENTS:

●  Highly intelligent strategist with 7+ years of professional experience, ideally with previous focus on European fintech. Prior geo expansion/market entry experience gathered at a top-tier strategy consulting firm and/or at scaling tech/fintech organisations highly relevant

●  Proven effective in dealings with third parties strategic suppliers - from identification, selection, commercial negotiation, relationship building and relationship management, ideally in a pan-European context

●  Passionate and intensely curious self-starter, fascinated with positive impact that technology can make on financial well-being of millions of people and willing to work hard to make it happen

●  High degree of personal responsibility and drive to deliver results coupled with open and genuine collaboration and communication, team spirit and good humour

●  Fluent in English, other European languages a plus