[Hiring] Lead Insolvency and Agency Management @Merchant Growth

Role Description

As Lead, Insolvency and Agency Management, you'll own how Merchant Growth recovers value from accounts that have moved beyond day-to-day collections, including insolvencies, legal recoveries, and accounts placed with external partners. You'll join a high-performing, creative, and collaborative group known for scaling teams with intention, solving meaningful challenges, and creating space for talented people to do their best work.

We are seeking an experienced Lead, Insolvency and Agency Management, reporting to the VP of Collections, to act as our internal subject matter lead for bankruptcies, proposals, receiverships, legal recovery, and external collection activity. This role takes ownership of accounts escalated from our Collections team, manages our network of collection agencies, law firms, and other recovery vendors, and makes recovery decisions based on expected return, cost, and risk.

You'll work closely with Collections, Legal, Finance, and Risk to maximize recoveries while maintaining strong documentation, controls, and regulatory compliance. While this role does not currently have direct reports, it is designed to grow with us. As our portfolio and team expand, we expect this role to build and lead a dedicated recoveries team. In the meantime, you'll act as a subject matter resource and mentor for our Collections team on insolvency, escalations, and recovery best practices.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years of experience in commercial collections, recoveries, insolvency, special assets, or financial services.
• Strong working knowledge of Canadian insolvency processes, including the BIA, CCAA, and the roles of Licensed Insolvency Trustees and receivers.
• Experience managing collection agencies, law firms, or other recovery vendors, including setting and enforcing performance standards.
• Experience with commercial lending, fintech, merchant cash advance, or small-business credit portfolios preferred.
• Understanding of personal guarantees, secured lending, and PPSA, including how they apply to merchant cash advance agreements, is an asset.
• Proven ability to evaluate recovery options based on expected return, cost, and risk.
• Strong analytical skills, with experience building and interpreting recovery and vendor performance reporting.
• Strong communication, negotiation, and vendor-management skills.
• Experience mentoring, coaching, or leading others is an asset.
• Highly organized, with the ability to manage multiple active files and hard deadlines.
• Experience with CRM, lending, or collections management systems preferred.
• French language fluency is an asset.

Requirements

• Manage accounts subject to bankruptcy, proposal, receivership, CCAA restructuring, or other formal insolvency proceedings under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).
• Review insolvency notices, creditor packages, and supporting documentation to determine the appropriate recovery strategy.
• Prepare, file, and track Proofs of Claim and other creditor documentation, ensuring all filing deadlines are met.
• Review our security position, including PPSA registrations, to confirm secured or unsecured standing on each file.
• Act as the primary contact for Licensed Insolvency Trustees, receivers, monitors, and insolvency counsel, and attend creditor meetings as required.
• Assess proposals and recommend voting positions based on expected recovery compared with alternatives.
• Monitor key filing dates, creditor meetings, distributions, and other insolvency milestones.
• Track expected and realized distributions and maintain accurate status updates on all insolvency files.
• Own relationships with collection agencies, law firms, skip tracing providers, investigators, and asset-search providers.
• Develop and maintain placement strategies based on account age, balance, jurisdiction, risk, and recovery potential.
• Manage account placement, recall, reassignment, and escalation processes.
• Set service-level expectations and conduct regular performance and business reviews with each vendor.
• Monitor recovery rates, liquidation rates, cost-to-collect, and other agency performance metrics, and act on underperformance.
• Ensure vendors comply with contractual, privacy, and regulatory requirements and with our controls on information sharing.
• Reconcile agency recoveries, commissions, and remittances.
• Participate in vendor selection, onboarding, and contract reviews, and keep pricing and service terms competitive.
• Assess accounts for legal action, enforcement, settlement, or further investigation.
• Coordinate files requiring legal action with internal Legal and external counsel, and oversee litigation and enforcement activity.
• Lead recovery against personal and corporate guarantors, including assessing the scope and enforceability of guarantees.
• Coordinate asset, property, corporate, and PPSA searches to support recovery decisions.
• Partner with Risk and Collections on accounts showing signs of fraud or misrepresentation.
• Take ownership of accounts escalated from the Collections team, including accounts that remain unlocated after internal skip tracing, and determine the next recovery step.
• Partner with Collections leadership to set clear hand-off criteria between internal Collections and external Recoveries.
• Act as a subject matter resource for the Collections team, including coaching Associates on escalated accounts, skip tracing, and insolvency matters.
• Recommend or approve settlements, legal escalation, write-offs, or continued recovery activity within approved authority limits.
• Support the development of settlement, legal, and write-off policies, including settlement authority and escalation thresholds.
• Identify accounts requiring specialized recovery approaches and opportunities to improve recovery performance.
• Produce regular reporting on insolvency and legal inventory, agency placements and performance, post-write-off recoveries, recovery costs, and expected insolvency distributions.
• Identify trends in defaults, insolvencies, and recoveries, and provide recommendations to management.
• Work with Finance to support appropriate treatment of recoveries, provisions, and write-offs.

Benefits

• An exciting position with a leading Canadian fintech company.
• Remote-first work, with an option to work in office (we are in Gastown).
• Competitive salary.
• Comprehensive group health benefits (Life, AD&D, Extended Health & Dental, and Travel Insurance).
• Company-wide monthly Lunch and Learns and team events.
• A collaborative team environment.
• Education and learning benefits.