VP, Credit Card Portfolio

Position Summary 

The Vice President, Credit Card Portfolio is responsible for leading the growth, profitability, and strategic direction of the credit card business for a $2.6B credit union. This executive owns portfolio performance, including new account growth, activation, spend, balances, interchange income, retention, and credit quality. The role combines portfolio management, analytics, product strategy, marketing optimization, and cross-functional leadership to drive sustainable growth while maintaining alignment with the credit union's risk appetite and member-first mission. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Develop and execute a credit card growth strategy designed to increase card penetration, new account acquisition, active cardholders, purchase volume, outstanding balances, and overall portfolio profitability. 

• Own portfolio performance and growth objectives, including new accounts, activation rates, card usage, outstanding balances, revolving balances, purchase volume, interchange revenue, net interest income, and return on assets. 

• Lead acquisition strategies through pre-approved, pre-qualified, cross-sell, digital, branch, and partnership channels while optimizing approval rates, activation rates, and cost of acquisition. 

• Drive activation and engagement strategies that improve first-use rates, increase active cardholders, and accelerate card usage and spend. 

• Develop initiatives to increase purchase volume, transaction frequency, wallet share, rewards engagement, and average spend per active account. 

• Lead retention and loyalty strategies designed to reduce portfolio attrition, improve active card retention, and increase customer lifetime value. 

• Manage portfolio profitability through optimization of pricing, rewards, credit line management, balance transfer programs, promotional offers, and member engagement strategies. 

• Oversee portfolio analytics across acquisition, activation, utilization, spend, revolve rate, attrition, profitability, and lifetime value to identify growth opportunities. 

• Conduct segmentation, cohort, and vintage analyses to improve card penetration, utilization, balances, and profitability. 

• Develop predictive models and forecasting methodologies to project portfolio growth, purchase volume, revolving balances, interchange revenue, profitability, attrition, and lifetime value. 

• Evaluate and optimize credit line assignment, credit limit increase programs, and utilization strategies to increase responsible balance growth while maintaining acceptable risk levels. 

• Work with Risk to monitor delinquency, charge-offs, loss rates, fraud losses, and credit quality indicators. 

• Partner with Marketing to monitor campaign effectiveness using performance metrics and ROI analysis to improve conversion, activation, spend growth, and retention outcomes. 

• Assess channel effectiveness across digital, branch, direct mail, and partnerships and adjust investment based on performance and ROI. 

• Build business cases and financial projections for new products, enhancements, partnerships, and growth initiatives. 

• Develop executive dashboards that track portfolio growth, active accounts, card penetration, balances, profitability, activation rates, retention, and credit quality. 

• Present portfolio performance, forecasts, growth opportunities, and strategic recommendations to executive leadership and the Board. 

• Lead, develop, and mentor a high-performing team focused on portfolio growth, analytics, profitability, and member engagement. 

Qualifications 

• 10 years of progressive experience in credit card portfolio management, consumer lending, payments, or retail banking. 

• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree preferred. 

• Demonstrated success growing a credit card portfolio within a credit union, regional bank, or similar-sized financial institution. 

• Strong experience with portfolio analytics, P&L management, forecasting, segmentation, and growth strategy. 

• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives across Marketing, Risk, Finance, Operations, and Product. 

• Executive-level communication and leadership skills. 

• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree preferred.