Head of Retail Product

Role purpose 

Lead the strategy, development, and performance of the credit and transactional product portfolio (Credit Cards, Personal and Payroll Loans, Mortgages, DDA/current accounts, and Acquiring), ensuring profitable growth, regulatory compliance, and strong commercial execution, in line with the bank’s financial objectives (incl. FRP) and customer needs.

In this role, you will:

• Define strategy of products (Credit Cards, Personal and Payroll Loans, Mortgage. DDA and Acquiring).
• Guarantee return on credit card portfolio aligned to FRP.
• Responsible for product development planning, management launch and control.
• Maintain strict control in compliance with regulatory actions and mandatory on the products.
• Lead Lending & cards commercial strategy.
• Coordinate and allocate workloads across the team in line with each member’s responsibilities, skills, and capacity to ensure balanced delivery and clear accountability.
• Ensure initiatives and actions are implemented within agreed timelines through disciplined planning, tracking, and ongoing follow-up.
• Deliver shared objectives with other areas through effective coordination, stakeholder alignment, and negotiation to remove blockers and maintain momentum.
• Provide day-to-day guidance, coaching, training, and development for the team, building capability, engagement, and a high-performance culture.
• Ensure the effective execution and ongoing performance of commercial offers and strategies to increase origination/placement, monitoring results and making timely adjustments to maximise impact.
• Identify improvement opportunities across operational processes and design, agree, and implement action plans to enhance efficiency, reduce friction, and improve customer outcomes.
• Define appropriate service levels with operational areas and ensure consistent achievement through clear SLAs, performance measurement, and regular governance reviews.

Principal Accountabilities and Responsibilities:

Portfolio strategy and management

• Define the end-to-end strategy for products (value proposition, segmentation, pricing, channels, positioning, and roadmap).
• Prioritise initiatives by impact (revenue, risk, NPS/experience, operational efficiency) and regulatory/operational feasibility.
• Manage the product lifecycle: launch, growth, optimisation, and—where relevant—sunset.

Profitability and financial performance (Cards / FRP)

• Ensure returns on the credit card portfolio (and the broader portfolio, where applicable) are aligned to FRP, with a focus on:
• revenue (interest income, fees, interchange, cross-sell),
• costs (acquisition, servicing, rewards, fraud),
• asset quality (delinquency, losses, provisions).
• Define and monitor P&L and performance KPIs (ROE/ROI, margin, cost of risk, activation, spend, revolving rates, retention).

Product development and go-to-market

• Own development planning: requirements, business cases, and stakeholder alignment (Risk, Compliance, Legal, Operations, Technology, Finance).
• Lead go-to-market: offer design, customer journeys, sales materials, training, and post-launch performance control.
• Ensure robust product governance and change control (pricing/fees, T&Cs, policies, campaigns, channels).

Regulatory compliance and controls

• Maintain strict control of compliance with regulatory actions and mandatory requirements applicable to the products.
• Ensure product documentation, disclosures, contracts, sales practices, and processes comply with regulations and internal policies.
• Manage audits, issues/findings, and remediation plans (with owners, deadlines, and evidence).

Lending & Cards commercial strategy

• Lead the commercial growth strategy: acquisition, activation, usage, cross/upsell, and retention.
• Design campaigns and commercial levers with Marketing/Channels/Sales, protecting profitability and risk appetite.
• Coordinate execution across channels (branches, digital, call centre, partners) with clear metrics and accountability.

To be successful in the role, you should meet the following requirements:

• Proven experience leading product management for retail banking portfolios, ideally across Credit Cards and Lending (Personal/Payroll Loans, Mortgages); exposure to DDA and/or Acquiring is a strong plus.
• Demonstrated ownership of product P&L, with a track record of delivering profitable growth and returns aligned to financial plans (e.g., FRP).
• Experience taking products from concept to launch and optimisation, including business case development, pricing/fees, value proposition, and go-to-market execution.
• Strong commercial experience designing and executing acquisition, activation, usage, and retention strategies across multiple channels (digital, branch, contact centre, partners).
• Experience working in a highly regulated environment, managing regulatory deliverables, audits, issues, and remediation plans.
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to execute effective actions in response to both internal and external situations, ensuring delivery against agreed objectives.
• Broad and comprehensive understanding of the systems, theories, and practices relevant to retail banking products and customer segments, backed by hands-on experience across different retail businesses, economic cycles, and analytical disciplines.
• Consistently demonstrates deep knowledge of consumer banking industry trends and competitor products, services, and propositions, in order to lead and contribute to IWPB’s strategic and commercial objectives.
• Deep understanding of the function’s strategic direction within WPB, supported by a strong conceptual and practical foundation in both the function and the relevant area of expertise.
• Proven ability to lead change and deliver a material transformation programme, requiring strong understanding of the customer base, optimal business process design and implementation, analytics, and technology.
• Ability to balance effective day-to-day operations and service delivery while driving substantial transformation and change at pace.

Functional Knowledge

• Strategic thinking with the ability to translate strategy into a clear roadmap, prioritised initiatives, and measurable outcomes.
• Strong financial acumen: P&L management, unit economics, cost-to-serve, cost of risk, and portfolio performance management.
• Solid understanding of credit fundamentals (risk appetite, underwriting principles, delinquency drivers, collections levers) and the interaction between risk and commercial outcomes.
• Data-driven decision-making: ability to define KPIs, interpret performance, and run test-and-learn initiatives (e.g., pricing, offers, campaigns).
• Stakeholder management and matrix leadership, influencing across Risk, Compliance, Legal, Operations, Technology, Finance, Marketing, and Sales.
• Excellent communication skills, able to simplify complex topics for senior stakeholders and frontline teams.

Leadership behaviours

• Strong people leadership and coaching capability (where direct reports exist), creating an inclusive, high-performance culture.
• High ownership mindset: proactive, accountable, and focused on outcomes, with disciplined execution and follow-through.
• Sound judgement and integrity, with a strong focus on customer outcomes and conduct.

Education & qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s degree (MBA or equivalent) preferred.
• Relevant professional certifications (e.g., Product Management, Agile, Risk/Compliance) are beneficial.

HSBC is an equal opportunity employer committed to building a culture where all employees are valued, respected and opinions count. We take pride in providing a workplace that fosters continuous professional development, flexible working and, opportunities to grow within an inclusive and diverse environment. We encourage applications from all suitably qualified persons irrespective of, but not limited to, their gender or genetic information, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, social status, medical care leave requirements, political affiliation, people with disabilities, color, national origin, veteran status, etc., We consider all applications based on merit and suitability to the role