I just started a new position as credit analyst. Most of the things I'm learning are new to me. I was wondering if you could recommend any books I could read that could help me with my job.

Lynn:

Hopefully, you have ended up at a sufficiently large institution that has a formal credit training program. However, as I can attest personally, this does not happen often. When I started my banking career in 1996, the institution that hired me had only $65MM in assets and a training budget just big enough to get a subscription to one or two magazines. This meant that I was thrown into the fire and had to learn on the job. I personally think that there is nothing better than experience, but I also recognize the benefits of having a library to refer to.

I think that the first thing that you will need one or two good accounting books. Even after working with financial statements for nine years, I will sometimes see something that will confuse me. The fact is that when you work for a particular institution you might end up doing the same type of deal over and over, and only see a particular type of borrower once a year. For example, fund accounting used by non-profits or certain types of deferred revenue are hard to understand for some analysts.

If I needed to recommend any books besides those, they would be the ones provided by Omega Performance Corporation, which are pretty much industry standard when it comes to training analysts for the job. The problem is that they are pricey and frankly they should be purchased by your employer. I have never used them myself, but thousands of bankers have been trained with those books.

You can check their offerings at their site “omega-performance.com”

I think that the name of the books that we have our trainees read are:

- Financial accounting for lenders
- Commercial loans to business
- Understanding personal cash flow
- Cash flow Analysis


Good luck on your new job