Credit management is a process that involves granting credit to potential customers, providing them with information on the credit granting process, and recovering the credit amount from the customers on the due date. A person who wants to make a career in this field should possess good analytical skills and be good at accounts, maths, and numerical ability, as accurate calculations are needed. For this role, credit specialists are hired by a firm with a view that they’ll minimise bad debts and boost incomes from the loan with their strong credit lending abilities.
Skills and Qualities Required to Become a Credit Manager or Credit Specialist
The skills and qualities required to become a credit manager or credit specialist are as follows:
Decision-Making Skills
The one who chooses credit management as their career needs to see the credit score of the existing customers or customers who want credit. Also, they need to manage the profits and losses of the organisation. For this, decision-making skills play an important role, as they need to make decisions keeping in mind all the essential factors.
Communication Skills
The role of the credit manager is to guide the customers with their credit score and creditworthiness, see the reporting of the firm, and supervise the staff that is working under them. So, the communications skills of the credit manager should be excellent to handle all the firm’s functioning and build a healthy relationship between the customers, the company, and the staff. Also, good communication skills are required to solve any customers’ queries related to their creditworthiness and interact with them.
Patience
Credit management is work that requires a good level of patience. As the credit specialist needs to make very important decisions, they should be calm and not get stressed easily, because patience is required for gaining maximum results.
Numerical Ability
Credit specialists are hired to tell the customers their creditworthiness and estimate the company’s financial statements. So, a credit manager needs to be good at accounts and maths, as accurate calculations are needed in this work. So, a person with excellent numerical ability is suitable for this job.
Credit Manager Career Growth
Mentioned below is the trajectory of a career in credit management:
Credit Management Intern
Those who want to make their career in the field of credit management first need to do an internship under the firm’s guidance to get skills, knowledge, and experience related to this department. Typically, interns don’t get paid; they work under professionals for exposure to new things, but those with excellent technical skills may get paid.
Junior Credit Manager
After completing the internship and getting exposure to working in the department, the candidates are initially hired for the Junior Credit Manager position. They work under the guidance and supervision of the senior credit specialist. Once they learn all the things and become experts in their work, the selected candidates are promoted to the level of senior credit manager.
Senior Credit Manager
After one has become an expert in their work, they can join as a Senior Credit Manager. Their job is to supervise the staff working under them and make potential customers understand their credit limits or credit score. Also, they need to collect all the loan information, evaluate the firm’s financial statements, determine the rate of interest, and examine the loan requests keeping in mind the revenue and loss of the firm.
Qualifications Required to Become a Credit Specialist
Qualifications required to become a credit specialist are as follows:
- One needs to score a minimum of 60% marks in intermediate from a recognised board of India.
- After completing 10+2, one could prepare for several entrance exams in commerce like IPU CET, CS Executive Entrance Test, CFA, CA Foundation, ICMAI, NPAT, etc.
- After clearing any of the above entrance exams, one could get admission to a top UG college and pursue any degree in tax, accounting, marketing, or finance, such as BCom, BBA, etc.
- For higher education, one could go for a postgraduate degree to achieve excellence, skills, and more knowledge related to this field. MBA or MSc will be the best option. Also, students can do internships side by side for more experience.
After gaining the required qualifications, skills, knowledge, and experience, one could apply for the job of a credit manager or credit specialist.
Conclusion
Credit managers are hired by an organisation to make customers understand their creditworthiness, credit limit, or credit score. They look after loan agreements, the process of granting credit to potential customers, and determining the interest rates. Apart from this, the job of a credit manager is seen to be the best to make a career.
In this article, we have discussed the skills and qualities required to become a credit Manager or credit specialist, a credit manager’s career growth, and the qualifications needed to become a credit specialist.