A credit underwriter's career path in asset finance

What an underwriter does

An underwriter decides whether a business can afford the finance it's asking for, and what happens if it can't. That means reading accounts and bank statements, checking credit files, understanding the people behind the business, and judging the asset: what it's worth, how long it will hold its value and how easily it could be sold.

The answer isn't always yes or no. Often it's "yes, if": a bigger deposit, a shorter term, a guarantee from the directors or a different asset. Explaining that clearly to sales colleagues and brokers is a big part of the job.

The usual steps

Job titles vary between employers, but most credit careers follow a similar path.

• Credit assistant or credit analyst. You gather information, prepare cases for underwriters and check that deals meet policy. At funders with automated decisions on smaller deals, you may handle the cases the system refers.
• Underwriter. You make your own decisions within a personal lending authority (often called a mandate), and refer larger or riskier deals upwards. You talk to BDMs and brokers every day.
• Senior underwriter. Larger and more complex deals, a higher lending authority, and often signing off other people's decisions and helping train newer underwriters.
• Credit manager or team leader. You run a team: workloads, quality, turnaround times and how past decisions are performing. You start to shape credit policy rather than only apply it.
• Head of Credit or Head of Risk. You own the credit policy and the appetite for risk, report to the board or a credit committee, and make the final call on the largest deals.

Moving up is mostly about trust: a growing lending authority follows a record of sound decisions. For one recent example, see how Novuna Business Finance's new Head of Risk came up through credit and underwriting roles there.

Choices along the way

• Deal size. Small-ticket credit is high volume and often supported by scorecards; large-ticket and structured credit means fewer, more complex deals with detailed write-ups.
• Asset type. Hard assets such as vehicles, plant and machinery hold value differently from soft assets such as IT and software. Knowing an asset class well makes you more valuable.
• Where the deals come from. Broker, direct or vendor business each bring their own pace and relationships.
• Sideways moves. Credit experience opens doors to portfolio management, collections and recoveries, risk and analytics, compliance, and sales. Many good BDMs started in credit.

Skills that move you up

• Reading accounts quickly and knowing which questions to ask next.
• Clear write-ups that a credit committee can follow and a colleague could pick up.
• Commercial judgement: finding a way to say yes when there is one, and giving a clear reason when there isn't.
• Working well with sales. Underwriters who explain their decisions build better deal flow.
• Knowing how your decisions performed. Being able to talk about your arrears and losses, and what you learnt from them, is what senior roles look for.

Most credit roles don't need a particular qualification, and people learn on the job. Some employers support professional study as you progress, so it's worth asking about.

Questions to ask about your next role

• What lending authority would you have, and how does it grow?
• How much is decided automatically, and how much is manual underwriting?
• What's the credit appetite: which sectors and assets does the business like, and which does it avoid?
• How are decisions reviewed, and who would you learn from?
• How quickly are decisions expected, and how is the workload shared?

Find your next role

See the latest credit and underwriting jobs, read our guide to careers in asset finance, or send us your CV for an honest view of where your experience could take you.