{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/credit-analysts/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Credit Analysts", "soc_code": "13-2041", "category": "Business", "us_employment": 64390, "median_annual_wage": 83510 }, "verdict": "COOKED", "risk_resistance": 24, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 5, "embodiment": 2, "liability_shield": 2, "trust_premium": 6, "judgment_accountability": 9 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Spreading a borrower's tax returns and audited statements into a standard template, recalculating DSCR, leverage and fixed-charge coverage, running the bureau pull and populating a memo template already happens inside Moody's/nCino/OCR pipelines at production banks — the 5 rather than a 2 reflects the site visits and management interviews on middle-market files that still need a person to sit in the room.", "embodiment": "Everything you touch is a core banking system, a spreadsheet and a PDF of a K-1; the occasional plant tour or borrower visit before an annual review is the only reason this isn't a flat 0.", "liability_shield": "There is no license to lose — CFA or CRC is a resume item, not a regulatory gate — and when a credit sours the exam finding lands on the approving officer's signature and the committee minutes, not the analyst who spread the numbers.", "trust_premium": "The borrower's phone calls go to the relationship manager; your standing is with internal consumers — the credit officer who trusts your recasts and the examiner who reads your file — which is real but transfers to whoever inherits the portfolio.", "judgment_accountability": "You choose which addbacks to allow, whether a related-party rent is arm's-length, and what covenant package to propose, but the risk rating you recommend is scrutinized against the bank's rating grid and overridden at committee, so the 9 marks genuine discretion inside a policy that names the limits." }, "rationale": "The core of this job — spreading financial statements, computing ratio and covenant metrics, pulling bureau and industry data, and drafting credit memos with a recommended risk rating — is structured text-and-numbers work that models and existing credit-scoring engines already handle at usable quality. What persists is the ambiguous middle-market file: judging management quality, unpicking related-party transactions or aggressive revenue recognition, and structuring covenants that a committee will actually approve. No license protects the role, and the borrower relationship is usually owned by the relationship manager, not the analyst.", "outlook": "Expect headcount to fall sharply as underwriting platforms absorb spreading and routine memo work, with the remaining jobs concentrated in complex commercial credit, workouts, and credit-policy oversight.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Bank supervisors extending model-risk rules to generative credit tools: if OCC/Fed SR 11-7 guidance (or a successor exam manual update) is read to require a named, qualified human credit officer to independently validate and attest to each AI-generated risk rating before it enters the loan file — and examiners cite institutions where memos are machine-drafted without an attributed reviewer — the analyst becomes the required signature rather than an optional one. CFPB's 2023 circular on adverse-action notices under Reg B (reasons must be specific and accurate, no 'black box' checklist) is the same mechanism operating on the consumer side.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formal delegation of lending authority downward: if banks respond to automated spreading by making analysts voting members of credit committee or holders of individual approval limits (a documented sign-off on structure and covenant package, with that name tied to the file in post-mortem and regulatory loan review), the role owns the consequential call instead of feeding someone else's. Watch for job titles shifting from 'credit analyst' to 'credit officer' with stated hold limits.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Pure task-mix shift, no law needed: this occupation has a genuine two-tier structure — spreading/ratio/bureau-pull tier and the ambiguous-file tier (management quality, related-party transactions, revenue-recognition aggressiveness, covenant structuring a committee will accept). If headcount falls and the surviving roles are staffed only on non-conforming middle-market, asset-based, and workout files, the residual day is mostly the tier models handle badly. Recognisable by shrinking analyst-to-loan ratios alongside rising average deal complexity.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Narrow route only, in private credit and non-bank direct lending: if LPs' side letters or fund diligence questionnaires begin requiring disclosure of whether underwriting memos were human-authored, and a named human underwriter of record is treated as a diligence checkbox, a thin premium attaches. This is speculative and would not extend to bank commercial lending, where the borrower never meets the analyst.", "plausibility": "unlikely", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "No licensure exists or is being proposed for credit analysis, so liability_shield cannot reach the levels of appraisal, audit, or actuarial work — the ceiling is exam-driven attestation duty, which attaches to the institution first and the individual only derivatively. Trust premium is structurally capped because the buyer-facing relationship belongs to the relationship manager. Realistic combined ceiling is roughly the low-to-mid 40s, and only if the judgment-tier files stay outside model competence." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 74850, "wage": 71290 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 74820, "wage": 71520 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 73930, "wage": 73650 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 72090, "wage": 74970 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 68770, "wage": 77440 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 71960, "wage": 78850 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 73200, "wage": 79420 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 67370, "wage": 80970 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 64390, "wage": 83510 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -14, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "accountants-and-auditors", "title": "Accountants and Auditors", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 42, "median_wage": 83680, "overlap": 79, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Personnel Resources", "Technology Design", "Coordination", "Instructing" ] }, { "slug": "loan-officers", "title": "Loan Officers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 37, "median_wage": 76690, "overlap": 72, "skills_to_close": [ "Technology Design", "Instructing", "Judgment and Decision Making", "Management of Personnel Resources" ] }, { "slug": "economists", "title": "Economists", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 35, "median_wage": 124720, "overlap": 72, "skills_to_close": [ "Instructing", "Writing", "Learning Strategies", "Science" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }