How Does a Credit Analyst Spend a Workday?

Early Morning

Immediately upon arrival at the office, a credit analyst gets to work reviewing the news of the morning. E-mail must be read along with the Wall Street Journal. The computer will also be used to log in to one or more of the news wire services that provide updated information on companies whose finances and credit you are handling at the time. The morning will also likely be spent listening to recordings of earnings conferences by those companies. These conferences can and will also be listened to live at various points of the day, but many credit analysts like to review the tape the next morning so they better manipulate the experience through fast-forwarding, pausing, and rewinding. It is not entirely out of the question that you are asked to conduct an interview with CNBC about the prospects of a company.

Late Morning to Early Afternoon

The late morning will probably entail attending a rating committee meeting. This meeting is designed to call for a vote by all the credit analysts for a company or companies. Issuing a credit rating by utilizing the analysis done for the company by several different analysts is a way of engendering a more consistent and fair rating. The ratings are issued in alignment with the standard target range according to one of the three major credit-rating agencies: Standard & Poor's, Moody's, or Fitch's. These meetings can be very beneficial to a credit analyst by providing richly detailed information about individual companies as well as the larger business sectors. The early afternoon may involve discussing credit-rating upgrades or downgrades with the chief financial officer of a company as well as preparing a press release to announce that upgrade or downgrade.

Later Afternoon

The latter part of the day may be spent responding to telephone calls or urgent e-mails about any credit upgrades or downgrades that you have been responsible for issuing. If the company's credit upheaval was to be expected, this part of the day may be light; however, expect some very antagonistic confrontations if you issue a credit downgrade to a company that was not expecting it. The late afternoon hours will also involve more review and research of a company's data, revising and editing the information applied to computer spreadsheets about the companies you work on, handling phone calls from PR firms and investment bankers, and reviewing the duties you will be called upon to perform when you arrive at the office the next workday.