Partnership Manager - Financial Services - HAL

• SC Ventures is Standard Chartered ’s innovation, fintech investment and ventures arm. We were established to reinvent banking, as the significant technological disruptions to the industry was impacting its ability to serve clients and customers, in the ways they needed to be served. We are a unique ecosystem of innovators, banking experts, business builders and partners who are focused on rewiring the DNA in banking and bringing breakthrough ideas to scale, together. We are building ecosystems around four high conviction themes: Online Economy & Lifestyle, SMEs & World Trade, Digital Assets, and Sustainability & Inclusion. We are a global team of "Members" (excluding individual ventures), including dedicated colleagues from the Group's support functions, based in Singapore, Hong Kong, London, and the United Arab Emirates

About HAL

HAL is a Standard Chartered Ventures platform building the trade and financial infrastructure layer for UAE SMEs. HAL connects commerce, embedded finance, and services in a single verified workflow – turning fragmented SME trade into a data layer that credit, payments and growth.

About The Role

The role sits at the heart of how HAL builds and grows its financial services ecosystem. You are relationship/account manager, commercial negotiator, GTM driver, co-product builder, and program manager – often in the same week. You own HAL’s bank, NBFC, and lending partnerships end – to – end: from onboarding new partners where needed, to deepening existing ones, driving joint objectives including revenue, building products together, and taking them to market. You are the person both HAL’s internal teams and our financial services partners can point to and say: this is our owner.

Strategy

1. Translate HAL’s financial services partnership priorities into a quarterly execution plan for your partner set; surface pipeline recommendations.
2. Feed intelligence on partner priorities – budget cycles, leadership changes, product shifts to cross functional team in HAL.
3. Identify new partnership opportunities in the financial services landscape – banks, NBFCs, lending partners, payment providers – assess fit, build the case, and lead onboarding where approved.
4. Also maintain competitive awareness of who is approaching HAL’s bank and lending partners and what they are offering.

Business

1. Own the full commercial lifecycle for assigned financial service partners – from structured first conversation through mou, pilot sow, 90-day review, and scale decision.
2. Drive revenue through active partner account management: track GMV contribution, financing referral volumes, activation rates, and take-rate performance against agreed targets; intervene early when objectives are off.
   Maintain Joint Business Plans for each active partner with owned KPIs, agreed milestones, and named escalation paths.
3. Structured and negotiate commercial arrangements – origination fees, revenue share models, take rate on GMV.
4. Run quarterly business review for their respective book of partners; lead the meeting, prepare material, and follow-up action into closure.
5. Lead co-productizing efforts with financial services partners: identify where a joint product (co-branded credit product, embedded lending flow, etc.) creates mutual value, scope it with product and tech, and own the commercial structure around it.
6. Map partner organisations deeply, - maintain active relationship across product, lending, neo, tech, and other relevant GTM teams, not just the primary contact.

Processes

1. Drive program management across all active partner workstream: maintain a clear view of what's is on track, what is at risk, and what needs escalation – across commercial, product, tech, and GTM tracks simultaneously.
2. Apply the partner underperformance protocol: diagnose the root, cause, restructure the pilot or exit cleanly.

People & Talent

1. Own the relationship across the full stakeholder map within each partner – not just hte primary contact but product, lending, neo banking, tech, sales, and legal teams within each bank or NBFC.
2. Represent HAL credibility at senior manager and director level in partner – facing settings.

Risk Management

1. Understand the regulatory environment around embedded lending, credit referrals, and SME data sharing with banking partners.
2. Ensure all pilots are scoped narrowly with documented, signed commitments; no verbal agreements that harden into assumed obligations.
3. Identify and escalate partner commitments risk early – champion departure, budget reallocation, falling engagements etc.

Governance

The Partnership Manager should ensure that the partnerships adhere to the business rules and legal standards.

Regulatory & Business Conduct

• Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group’s Values and Code of Conduct.

• Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank. This includes understanding and ensuring compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations, guidelines and the Group Code of Conduct.

• Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.

Key stakeholders

• CEO

• CCO

• Head of Business Development

Other Responsibilities

• Embed Here for good and Group’s brand and values in the business and SC Ventures;

• Perform other responsibilities assigned under Group, Country, Business or Functional policies and procedures.

• Excellent communication, presentation, and negotiation skills

• Self-motivated and goal-oriented, with a resilient, "hunter" mentality

• A deep understanding of market dynamics, industry trends, and the competitive landscape.

• Proficiency with crm software (e.g., salesforce, hubspot) and other sales automation tools.

• Strong interpersonal skills for building and maintaining client relationships.

• A bachelor's degree in business administration, marketing, or a related field.

• An MBA or other master's degree is preferred

• English (Arabic Preferred)

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.