Credit analysis and lending

ISCO-08 3312, 2413

Credit analyst, Corporate credit analyst, Credit underwriter, Loan structuring analyst, Credit committee officer, Head of credit underwriting

AI exposure61%

Headcount need, in FTE

Exposure range

Your current headcount

FTE

Need in 203083 FTE-17 FTE (-17%)

Need in 203567 FTE-33 FTE (-33%)

How AI is used on these tasks today

Automation 56%Augmentation 44%

In AI conversations about this job's tasks: the AI does the task itself (automation) or helps the person do it (augmentation).Anthropic Economic Index, April and May 2026. Occupations: Credit Analysts, Loan Officers. AEI

1. Exposure 61%Average automation potential of the job's tasks. Range for this family: 56 to 68%.ILO occupations used: Credit and Loans Officers (60%), Financial Analysts (62%). ILO data

2. Strategic ceiling 100%Your call: how much of this potential do you want to capture? Nobody can set it for you.

3. Adoption speed midpoint 2030

Inherits your company stance, adjustable for this family.

4. Conversion to headcount sensitive 55%Default 55%: Loan volumes depend on the market, not on analyst capacity; faster analysis mostly reduces staffing, while part funds closer portfolio monitoring.

Target AI skills

level 1 to 4

Foundation

Use AI assistants every day

Frame and phrase a request

Check and challenge AI outputs

Protect data and respect the rules

Applied

Rethink one's process with AI

Analyse data with AI

Produce content with AI

Delegate to and supervise AI agents

Expert

AI governance and risk management

Job skills

Growing in value

Judgement on atypical and large exposures
Defending a credit opinion in committee
Challenging model scores and AI-drafted memos
Sector and collateral expertise

Losing value

Spreading financial statements
Drafting standard credit memos
Manual covenant and ratio checks
Assembling annual review files

How the job will change

Much of an analyst's time goes into spreading balance sheets, recalculating ratios, checking covenants and writing a credit memo in a fixed template. AI now reads financial statements, fills the spreading model, drafts the memo and points out weaknesses. In retail and small business lending, the decision itself is increasingly automated within delegated limits, leaving analysts the files that fall outside the rules.

The job concentrates on large, complex or unusual exposures: LBO financing, property developers, groups in difficulty. A good analyst tomorrow knows when the model is wrong, can argue an opinion in committee and understands a sector well enough to see what the figures hide. Requirements on model explainability also bring analysts closer to the risk teams.

2026-2027: Automated spreading and pre-drafted credit memos on standard files.
2028-2030: Small-ticket decisions automated within delegations; analysts focus on exceptions.
2031+: Smaller teams of senior analysts on complex and large exposures.

Watch out

Credit judgement is learned on hundreds of ordinary files. If juniors no longer handle them, banks risk a generation of analysts unable to challenge the models they supervise. See the seniority outlook below.

What if you hired fewer juniors?

Your 2036 seniors are the juniors you hire today.

Seniors available in 2036-5%2 FTE short

Gap above 5% from2036

Your seniority mix today

Juniors (0 to 3 yrs in the profession)25%Seniors (10+ yrs)30%

Mid-level (3 to 10 yrs in the profession, the remainder)45%

Cut in junior hiring -40%

For

Advanced settings

Juniors promoted each year25%Juniors leaving each year12%Senior gap filled by external hiring0%If every company makes the same bet, senior profiles will be scarce and expensive.

Seniority mix, % of today's headcount

Juniors25%Mid-level42%Seniors28%

2026 2036

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How the numbers are built

Every headcount figure combines four assumptions. Three come pre-filled from public research and job family defaults. The strategic ceiling is yours to set.

Public researchExposureAverage automation potential of the job's tasks, from the ILO's 2025 task-level scores.

Your decisionStrategic ceilingHow much of that potential you choose to capture. Your decision, not ours.

Your companyAdoption speedHow fast your company moves, set once for the whole company.

Job family defaultConversion to headcountHow much of the productivity gain becomes fewer people rather than more output.

Headcount effect

Seniority outlook

A flow model with three levels of experience in the profession. Promotion and exit rates are set so that today's mix stays stable when hiring does not change: any gap you see comes from the junior hiring cut alone.