Working in credit — careers, paths, what good looks like — Credit Module 13

Credit is one of the largest employment areas in finance. The work spans the credit cycle from origination through workout, and lives at banks, rating agencies, fund managers, sovereign offices, central banks, and inside corporations. Salaries are competitive (lower than IB / private equity, higher than commercial banking generally). Career paths are genuinely good.

The six main tracks

Bank credit analyst → relationship manager → credit committee member: the classic path. Build technical skills on the analyst seat, develop relationships as RM, eventually own credit policy as senior credit officer.
Structured finance: specialised within investment banks or boutique firms. Build, market, and trade securitisations, project finance, leveraged buyouts. Quant-heavier.
Rating agency: Moody's, S&P, Fitch, or local agencies. Senior analysts cover specific sectors; team work and conference attendance heavy. Pays less than banks but huge intellectual breadth.
Distressed-debt fund: smaller team, higher comp, very long hours during distressed cycles. Combines credit analysis with legal and negotiation skills.
Sovereign credit analyst: at central banks, IMF, World Bank, rating agencies, or buy-side macro funds. Mix of credit and macro work. Travel-heavy.
Corporate treasury: in-house credit. Manage the company's borrowing relationships, oversee their own credit ratings, evaluate counterparty credit exposure. Less hectic than bank credit but you live with the consequences.

What good looks like at each stage

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Junior analyst (years 1-3)
  ─ Builds models that work — clean financial spreads, consistent assumptions.
  ─ Documentation discipline: every credit memo defensible months later.
  ─ Knows the policy manual cold; doesn't have to look up exceptions.

Mid analyst / associate (years 4-7)
  ─ Develops sector specialisation (banks, consumer, energy, real estate).
  ─ Anticipates senior questions — does the analysis BEFORE asked.
  ─ Can structure a credit independently for routine deals.

Senior analyst / VP (years 8-15)
  ─ Owns the relationship with major borrowers — RMs and treasurers know them.
  ─ Makes judgement calls on credits without clear precedent.
  ─ Trains juniors; spots talent.

Credit committee member / Head of credit (years 15+)
  ─ Owns credit policy. Sets the bank's risk appetite.
  ─ Can read a complex situation in 30 minutes and reach a defensible conclusion.
  ─ Carries scar tissue from past cycles — knows what bad credits look like.

The skill progression is judgement under uncertainty, with technical skills as the entry ticket.

The skill that matters most

Senior credit officers I've known agree on one thing: the most valuable skill is recognising patterns in credits before they break. A borrower whose growth is slowing; an industry where a major customer is concentrating risk; an over-leveraged restructuring that's about to need a rescue — the senior person sees these patterns months or quarters before they show up in the financials. Pattern recognition comes from seeing many credits over many cycles, with deliberate reflection. There is no shortcut, but you can compound the rate by always doing a 'lookback' on every credit you've worked on.

Where to start in Kenya

Tier-1 Kenyan banks (KCB, Equity, Coop, NCBA, ABSA, Stanbic) all have credit analyst graduate programs. Big Four accounting firms (KPMG, Deloitte, PwC, EY) have transaction services and risk advisory teams that touch credit. AfDB, IMF, World Bank country offices, and the National Treasury also hire credit-adjacent analysts. CFA Institute coursework and a focused project portfolio (write a credit memo on a listed company, post it publicly) accelerate entry into any of these.

From here

Twelve modules of comprehensive credit. From here: the DCF Valuation course will sharpen your projection skills; the Financial Statements course your analysis; the Climate Finance course shows the new dimension every credit analyst will need to understand by 2030 (transition risk in credit decisions). For Kenyan context specifically, follow the IMF Article IV reports on Kenya, read the National Treasury's annual Public Debt Management Report, and read at least one Eurobond prospectus from cover to cover. Mwalimu — your AI tutor — can walk you through any of these.

Exercise

Pick a publicly-listed Kenyan company (Safaricom, KCB, EABL, Co-op Bank). In 1,000 words: (1) summarise their business and credit profile; (2) compute basic credit metrics (debt/EBITDA, interest coverage, ROCE); (3) compare to peers; (4) write a one-paragraph credit conclusion in the style of a rating agency. Compare your conclusion to any actual rating reports you can find. Where do you agree? Where do you disagree? Why?