Senior Manager, Small Business Lending

For almost 70 years, Export Finance Australia has helped Australian businesses grow and succeed internationally with finance to secure opportunities, expand into new markets and diversify their presence. We support critical minerals and defence sectors, finance projects that strengthen economic resilience and advance net zero, and back Australian investment in sustainable infrastructure. 

Working with banks, other Government agencies and international partners, we back Australia’s exporters, supply chain businesses and industries, contributing to a more stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific while advancing Australia’s trade, investment and economic security objectives.  

The Senior Manager, Small Business Lending is a critical role to ensure the overall performance of the Small Business pipeline for lending up to $350k and guarantees up to $500k to help us deliver our customer growth objectives. This includes owning and proactively driving applications to conversion, optimising the customer experience and ensuring customers progress through the application process and Small Business pipeline. 

Your new role

Location: Sydney
Role Type: Full-time, Permanent

About you

• Ownership and accountability for managing leads, applications and referrals from Marketing, Small Business Sales, and Mid-Market to actively drive these to signing. This requires a strong skillset in helping customers and to establish relationships with internal stakeholders.
• Review applications and prepare the submission for pre-screen and credit analysis including obtaining additional information or documents as required, whilst thoroughly understanding the customer’s business and its needs.
• Utilise credit and finance knowledge to work collaboratively with Credit Risk team and other internal partners to optimise approvals and ensure KYC/AML compliance.
• Meticulous approach to data entry and records management to maintain customer pipeline data in the EXFOS CRM, ensuring system/reporting accuracy, capturing new data as required, and updating existing information.
• Deliver improved conversion of application to signing and time to application approval in the non-credit components.

Qualifications & Skills

• Previous experience in business lending, with minimum 5 years’ experience in customer success or business development. Proven experience in managing business or other lending applications with customers
• Understanding of the business fundamentals, how businesses scale and their financial requirements during the growth cycle.
• Credit assessment, risk and regulatory knowledge to assist in driving conversion of deals through to approval.
• Relationship skills – proven ability to build and maintain strong relationships with key customers, driving business outcomes including conversion, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.
• Ability to articulate EFA’s suite of products and understand how the Small Business channels can help customers through a variety of financing solutions.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to engage with business customers and establish strong internal relationships throughout the origination process, such as credit and legal, to drive the outcome.

Even if you haven’t ticked every box but this role resonates with you, don't rule yourself out just yet, we'd love to hear from you!

Our benefits and culture

We are small enough to have an impact, BIG enough to make a world of difference and it starts with our people.

We support flexible working and pride ourselves in fostering a culture that is inclusive, diverse and collaborative. We are proud to be certified as a 2025 Great Place to Work for a fifth consecutive year, recognised on the 2023 AFR BOSS Best Places to Work list and listed as one of Australia’s Best Workplaces for Women in 2025. 

In line with our commitment to our people, we have a comprehensive array of benefits available to our employees:

• Generous leave provisions (e.g. Annual Wellbeing day) and leave purchase opportunities
• 18 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers
• Thorough induction onboarding program
• Fitness Passport along with other Health & Wellbeing initiatives
• Gender affirmation leave
• Income Protection Insurance
• Community volunteering
• and many more!

Our headquarters is based in Sydney CBD, and we have a national presence across Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.

Eligibility

Australian Citizenship - To be eligible to apply for this position, applicants must hold Australian Citizenship at the time of application.

Security Clearance - To be eligible to apply for this position, applicants must be able to obtain and maintain a Baseline security clearance.

How to apply

Applications close: 8 March 2026.  

Interviews will occur in parallel, so please apply ASAP.
Enquiries: Careers@exportfinance.gov.au      
  
To apply, please email your CV to Careers@exportfinance.gov.au      

By choosing to apply, you agree to the recruitment privacy policy.

We invite and welcome applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people from diverse cultural backgrounds, people with disability and members of the LGBTQIA+ community. 

If you are a candidate with a disability, let us know how we can provide you with additional support.

About us

Export Finance Australia is Australia’s export credit agency.  

We provide finance to support Australian export trade and overseas infrastructure development across the Pacific and Indo-Pacific. Through our loans, bonds and guarantees, we support businesses – from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to large corporates – foreign governments and infrastructure projects, to take on the world. 

Working with banks, other government agencies and our partners, together we are helping drive international success for Australian businesses.

The reason our people join us, stay with us and grow with us is because they wholeheartedly believe in our purpose. They can see the impact we create for our customers.

We are a highly purpose-driven organisation. We seek to create an inclusive culture that values our customers and employees. Our people are expected to champion this and play a key role in achieving those outcomes. In working towards our strategy, our people display our IMPACT leadership behaviours of Frank & Fearless, Dexterous & Agile and Careful & Diligent

For more information about us, please refer to our website. 

Applications from recruitment agencies will not be considered on this occasion.