Team Lead, Collections

BUILD SOMETHING PEOPLE LOVE Wealthsimple is Canada’s leading financial innovator. The company offers a full suite of simple, sophisticated financial products across managed investing, do-it-yourself trading, cryptocurrency, tax filing, spending and saving. Wealthsimple currently serves more than 4 million Canadians and holds over $169 billion in assets under administration. The company was founded in 2014 by a team of financial experts and technology entrepreneurs, and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. We're proud of what we've built — and we're just getting started. Read our Culture Manual https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/culture and learn more about how we work https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/careers. As the Team Lead, Collections, you will lead a frontline squad of Collections Specialists working delinquent credit card and retail banking accounts. You sit at the intersection of Client Experience, Credit Risk, and Compliance. You are accountable for recovering balances, helping clients get back into good standing, and making sure every conversation is fair, compliant, and human. You will also partner closely with the external vendors engaged across our collections lifecycle as we scale outreach. In addition to leading your internal team, you will act as the operational bridge to our external collection agency partners ensuring our end-to-end collections strategy operates with one consistent standard of operational rigor and client empathy. CORE DELIVERABLES & ACCOUNTABILITY - Manage intraday queues and outreach across delinquency stages to consistently hit contact, cure-rate, and recovery targets. - Monitor delinquency trends across credit cards and retail banking, deploying squad capacity to high-risk balances while adhering to revelant regulations - Resolve escalated accounts, including severe financial hardship, settlement exceptions, disputes, insolvencies (consumer proposals/bankruptcies), and client complaints. - Oversee external collection agencies, managing daily workflow handoffs, Slack escalations, training, and QA to maintain brand and compliance standards. - Track queue and bucket-level data to spot roll-rate spikes early, uncover root causes, and recommend operational adjustments to leadership. - Develop specialists through weekly 1:1s, live call monitoring, and calibrations that balance dollar recoveries with client empathy. - Audit calls and enforce strict adherence to Canadian federal/provincial collection rules, permitted calling hours, and privacy standards. WHAT YOU BRING: - 2+ years of frontline leadership experience leading collections or outbound recoveries within a financial institution, fintech, or collection agency. - Deep grounding in consumer lending and delinquency, including credit cards, retail banking, payment restructuring, settlements, and insolvencies. - Working knowledge of Canadian collection regulations, specifically permitted calling hours, contact-frequency limits, and privacy rules. - Process Automation & Optimization: Identify operational bottlenecks and continuously streamline workflows by leveraging tools like Zendesk, Workato, and internal automations to eliminate manual administrative tasks and drive squad efficiency. - Hands-on adoption of AI and automation tools, such as AI call transcription, automated QA scoring, and real-time agent-assist platforms. - Strong self-serve data mindset, with the ability to analyze performance trends across queues, agents, and delinquency buckets to adjust daily operations. - Exceptional de-escalation and negotiation skills, with proven experience coaching agents through complex, vulnerable, or adversarial client conversations. - Experience coordinating with external collection agencies (DCAs) on day-to-day workflow handoffs, calibration, and QA is an asset. - Bilingual proficiency in French and English is a strong asset to support Quebec accounts and call monitoring. WHY WEALTHSIMPLE? 🌸 Top-tier health benefits and life insurance 📈 Long-term group savings with employer match, through Wealthsimple for Business 🌴 20 vacation days, 4 wellness days, and unlimited sick and mental health days per year* ✈️ 90 days away: work outside Canada for up to 90 days per year* 👥 Employee resource groups, including Rainbow (2SLGBTQ), Women of WS, and Black at WS 🌎 We are a hybrid team with over 1,500 employees across North America. The people are one of the best parts of working here: you'll collaborate with incredibly talented, curious, and driven teammates who are deeply committed to doing great work. *Unlimited paid sick days, Wellness Days and the 90 day away program do not apply to certain roles. ICYMI Technology & Innovation at Wealthsimple: We move quickly and build thoughtfully. That means we're always looking for better ways to work — whether that's new tools, AI, or rethinking how we approach a problem. We don't expect you to have all the answers, but we do expect curiosity and a willingness to evolve alongside the products we're building. Inclusion Statement: We're building products for a diverse world, and we need a diverse team to do it well. We strongly encourage applications from everyone, regardless of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status. Accessibility Statement: We're committed to an accessible hiring experience. If you need any accommodations throughout the interview process, please let us know — we'll work with you to make sure you have what you need. We also welcome any feedback on how we can better accommodate candidates with accessibility needs. AI in Hiring: We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of our hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our team but don't replace human judgment – all final hiring decisions are made by people. If you have questions about how your data is used, reach out to us.