Senior Affiliate Partnerships Manager
About the Role
Our client is a fast-growing international payments and financial services business working with a broad network of referral and affiliate partners, including accountants, brokers, consultancies and industry specialists.
This role will own a portfolio of the business's highest-value affiliate relationships and be responsible for maximising the revenue generated through those partnerships.
You will manage the full commercial relationship with your portfolio, including performance, commercial terms, renewals and commission structures. You will also act as a strategic partner to affiliates, helping them understand the customer journey and ensuring referrals progress effectively through onboarding and conversion.
The affiliate channel is an important growth area for the business and is still being developed. This provides an opportunity to shape how the programme operates, including segmentation, processes, reporting, partner engagement and best practices.
You will not own the sales cycle itself. Once a referred customer has been qualified, the relevant sales team will take the opportunity forward. Your responsibility is to own the affiliate relationship, manage escalations and ensure referrals progress through to an outcome.
Responsibilities
- Manage a portfolio of high-value affiliate and referral partners against monthly and annual revenue targets.
- Develop account plans for each partner, identifying current referral activity, growth opportunities and barriers to performance.
- Use your understanding of complex industries and international markets to build credible relationships with partners and their clients.
- Develop a strong understanding of the customer onboarding and due diligence process and work with internal teams to ensure it works effectively for different sectors and customer profiles.
- Conduct regular performance reviews covering referral volumes, conversion, commissions and future pipeline.
- Negotiate and renew commercial terms, including commission structures, rates, exclusivity and contract duration.
- Manage the agreement lifecycle across the portfolio and ensure renewals are handled proactively.
- Oversee commission accuracy and work with Finance, Data and Product to resolve discrepancies.
- Help design and improve processes for affiliate onboarding, servicing, performance management and reporting.
- Forecast referral volumes and revenue accurately within the CRM.
- Qualify referred opportunities, hand them over to the relevant sales team and ensure appropriate follow-up.
- Develop partner enablement materials, onboarding guides and communication frameworks to improve affiliate productivity.
- Provide regular performance reporting and root-cause analysis to senior management.
- Represent the business at relevant industry events and partner forums.
Your Profile
- Proven experience managing referral, introducer or affiliate partnerships against commercial or revenue targets, ideally within payments, FX, fintech or financial services.
- Experience working with complex or non-traditional industries and customers operating across multiple jurisdictions.
- Strong understanding of customer onboarding, due diligence and compliance processes.
- Confident negotiating commercial terms and protecting margins while maintaining strong partner relationships.
- Strong analytical and commercial skills, with the ability to understand commission structures, volumes, revenue and profitability.
- Good understanding of international payments and/or card issuing.
- Experience developing commercial or commission models that create value for both parties.
- Proven ability to build or improve processes within a growing business.
- Highly organised and comfortable managing multiple stakeholders, agreements and partner relationships simultaneously.
- Strong CRM and data management skills.