Loan Officer Career Guide

Loan officers work with clients who wish to borrow money, and evaluate, approve or reject their loan application. If you are someone who likes to work with both people and numbers, and has strong interpersonal communication skills, an analytical mindset, s accurate and can make tough decisions, then read on as you might just have stumbled across your dream career!

A loan officers work in various types of financial institutions and their typical responsibilities tend to include meeting with customers to determine their needs and recommend the right loan products. They also need to maintain an active knowledge base of all the organizations loan products, review active loan files each day to determine if any documents are missing and use professional judgement to determine which potential borrowers represent good risk opportunities for the organization.

To become a loan officer, you will need a bachelor?s degree in finance, or another mathematical and business-related degree as these will teach you microeconomics, macroeconomics, general economics, money and banking, risk and insurance, introduction to investments and principles of real estate. Additional training will then take place on the job.

After completing the education required to become a loan officer, one of the negatives of the job is that you will often have to work long hours. However, a career as a loan officer is relatively easy to get into after you have achieved your degree and on the job training is provided, leading to lots of career opportunities and advancement. Loan officers also get to work in small and supportive teams, where they create valuable relationships with their co-workers in a friendly and non-competitive environment.