Credit Analyst jobs: skills, pay and how to get hired

What a credit analyst does

A credit analyst, a Kreditanalyst in German ads, looks at a borrower before a bank or a lender takes it on and while the loan runs: the accounts, the cash the business produces, its debts, its market and its owners, and what the bank could recover if things go wrong. The result is a credit memo with a rating, a recommendation and the terms the bank should ask for, which a credit committee or a senior credit officer signs off. Credit analysts work in corporate and small business lending, in mortgages and consumer credit, at rating agencies and at funds that lend.

Some titles are this role under another name. A mortgage underwriter or a loan underwriter decides on a borrower in the same way, so lending underwriters are covered here; the underwriter page is about insurance. The risk manager looks at the whole loan book and the bank's models rather than one borrower; the relationship manager brings the client and the deal; the financial analyst analyses a company's own figures from the inside. A credit controller, who chases a company's unpaid invoices, does other work and is not covered here. The steps from junior credit analyst to chief credit officer are in the career paths of this role.

Supervisors differ by country, and each country's section names its own. This page describes the work; it is not financial, legal or career advice.

The skills the ads ask for

We read a sample of the ads every day and count the skills they name. On a computer, hover a skill in the text to see its share; on a phone, the table has the same figures.

The heart of the job is credit analysisJudge whether a borrower can repay, from its accounts, cash flow, market and management, and say why.: reading a borrower through financial statement analysisRead balance sheets, income statements and cash flow statements, adjust them and work out the key ratios., knowing how credit riskUnderstand how a loan can be lost, how likely that is and how much of it would come back. arises, and cash flow modelsBuild a cash flow forecast and stress it, so you can see when the borrower would struggle. that show how much debt the business can carry. Banks ask for accounting knowledgeKnow the accounting rules behind the figures, such as IFRS or local rules, and spot one-off items., lendingKnow how loans, credit lines and mortgages are structured, priced and documented. products, the bank's credit scoringUse the bank's rating or scoring model and explain where your judgement differs from its result. or rating tools, the BaselKnow how the capital rules for banks treat ratings, collateral and loan size. capital rules and KYCCheck who a borrower and its owners are, as part of the bank's onboarding, before credit is granted. checks, and see each loan inside the bank's risk limitsSee where a single loan fits the bank's limits for sectors, countries and large exposures.. ExcelSpread accounts and build forecasts and sensitivity tables that a second reviewer can follow. is everywhere, with SAPRead loan, customer and collateral data in the bank's core systems, often SAP. or other core systems and some SQLPull portfolio data yourself to check a trend before you write it into a review. for portfolio data.

The tools are named side by side and none is a must everywhere: Excel for spreading accounts, Bloomberg and Capital IQ for market data on larger borrowers, and loan origination systems such as nCino in some banks. Certificates are named the same way: the CFA charter is an international investment qualification that some credit teams name, and the US-based RMA offers a Credit Risk Certification. Much of the work is writing and defending the memoWrite a clear credit memo and defend it in the credit committee in a few minutes. and working with relationship managersWork with relationship managers who want the deal and the risk team who must accept it., in GermanAsked for in most German credit ads, for German accounts, contracts and borrowers. where the borrowers speak it and in EnglishThe language of loan documents, rating reports and many credit committees in international banks..

Where the jobs are, country by country

Each country below has its own figures: which cities have the most jobs in our list, whether the number is going up or down, how often ads offer remote or hybrid work, the titles used in the country, and pay ranges from published research, in the local currency.

The supervisors and rules are named side by side, each with its place. In the EU the Capital Requirements Regulation carries the Basel rules on how much capital a bank holds against its loans; the German MaRisk rules, set by BaFin, ask for a credit vote independent of the business side. The US Federal Reserve and the OCC supervise US banks, the UK PRA supervises UK banks for safety, FINMA supervises Swiss banks, and the RBI regulates lending in India. A bank's own credit policy says how these apply to each loan.

One credit decision, step by step

1. Collect: accounts, forecasts, bank statements, the loan request and what the owners say.
2. Analyse: profit, cash flow, debt and liquidity, adjusted for one-off items, and how the market is moving.
3. Stress: what happens to repayment if sales fall or interest rates rise.
4. Structure: amount, term, collateral and covenants that protect the bank.
5. Decide and monitor: the memo to the committee, then the yearly review and early warning signs.

The hardest moment is often not the first loan but the review a few years later, when the numbers have slipped and the relationship manager hopes the trend will turn by itself.

Your CV for a credit analyst job

A credit analyst's CV first meets software that searches it for the ad's words, then a head of credit who wants to know which borrowers you analysed, how large the loans were and how your calls turned out. Give both: the keywords and the evidence.

Use the keywords the ads use

• Write the work as the ads do: "credit analysis", "financial statement analysis", "cash flow", "credit memo", "rating", "covenants". The skills table above shows which keywords the ads use most.
• Name the borrowers by type and size: small businesses, mid-sized companies, property, private clients.
• Show the decisions: loans approved, declined or restructured, and how the portfolio performed.
• An exam of the international CFA programme or a credit course still under way goes on the CV as in progress, with the date of the next sitting.

Prove each skill

A credit line proves itself with a borrower, the analysis and what the bank decided.

Leave out what the bank keeps confidential: no borrower names, no actual terms, no internal ratings.

How we read our data

• The jobs: the credit analyst jobs in our job search (credit analysts, credit officers, credit, mortgage and loan underwriters, and the German titles Kreditanalyst and Kreditsachbearbeiter), matched by their titles the way the search matches them; credit risk titles are counted on the risk manager's page. Our list is not the whole market, so we give shares and rankings, never counts.
• The skills: every day we read a sample of these ads and count the skills in them with a fixed word list. Only the counts are kept, never the text of an ad.
• Pay: from published salary research, each source named with its date, as a range from entry level to senior. Our ads are not used for it.
• Dates: every figure is worked out again each day and shows the day it was worked out.

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