{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/financial-examiners/", "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": "Financial Examiners", "soc_code": "13-2061", "category": "Business", "us_employment": 67830, "median_annual_wage": 94160 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 42, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 8, "embodiment": 5, "liability_shield": 9, "trust_premium": 7, "judgment_accountability": 13 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Loan-file sampling, ALLL adequacy recalculation, tracing call-report line items back to the general ledger, and BSA transaction testing are all pattern work on structured data that supervisory analytics already run continuously — an 8 rather than a 4 because the on-site interview with the chief credit officer, the walkthrough of how a workout loan was actually classified, and the board meeting where you defend the rating still require a person in the room.", "embodiment": "You travel to bank premises for on-site exams, sit in the institution's conference room for weeks pulling paper credit files and asking officers for documents, and occasionally visit branches or a trust department vault — but nothing you touch requires physical skill, hence 5 rather than 12.", "liability_shield": "No licence gates the job — you are hired as an examiner and trained internally, with CFE, CAMS, or CPA credentials treated as advantageous rather than required — so the 9 reflects your commission as a federal or state examining official, the statutory examination authority under 12 USC 1820 or a state insurance code, and the fact that your name is on the report of examination, while the agency, not you personally, bears the legal exposure.", "trust_premium": "Bank management does not choose you and often does not want you there, but the multi-cycle relationship matters — knowing an institution's history, its previous MRAs, and which CFO shades the truth is why agencies keep an examiner-in-charge on the same portfolio — which puts it at 7 rather than 3.", "judgment_accountability": "Assigning a CAMELS composite, deciding whether weak underwriting is an MRA or a matter requiring immediate attention, and recommending a consent order or prompt-corrective-action downgrade are calls made on incomplete evidence that determine whether a bank keeps lending, and they get read back to you if the institution fails — 13 not higher because your rating passes through a review examiner, a regional supervisor, and interagency consistency committees before it becomes final." }, "rationale": "The modal financial examiner — a bank examiner at the FDIC, OCC, Fed, or a state banking or insurance department — spends most hours reading loan files, tracing balance sheet entries, testing transactions against BSA/AML and lending rules, and drafting examination write-ups, all of which AI already does at usable quality on structured financial data. What survives is the statutory authority to assign a CAMELS component rating, negotiate a consent order or MRA with a bank's board, and stake an agency's name on a safety-and-soundness conclusion that will be second-guessed if the institution fails. Expect the same examination workforce to cover more institutions with continuous data feeds rather than periodic file review, which shrinks the junior examiner pipeline where most of today's headcount sits.", "outlook": "Headcount holds roughly flat because supervision is statutorily mandated, but the work shifts from file-by-file examination to reviewing machine-flagged exceptions and owning the ratings and enforcement calls.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "An FFIEC or agency-level rule stating that a CAMELS composite/component rating, an MRA, or a formal enforcement recommendation is valid only when a commissioned examiner-in-charge personally attests to it and can be deposed on it — i.e., extending existing commissioning standards (FDIC/OCC examiner commissioning programs) into an explicit human-signature requirement for AI-derived findings, mirroring SR 11-7 model-risk expectations turned inward on supervisory tools. Also: administrative-hearing practice under the FDI Act where the enforcement record must rest on a human examiner's sworn testimony, not a model output, making the signing examiner functionally irreplaceable in contested actions.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Post-failure accountability regimes hardening after SVB/Signature — the Fed's own Barr review criticized supervisory judgment and escalation speed. If Congress or an IG framework attaches named-examiner accountability to escalation decisions (who saw the exception and chose not to escalate), the role's ownership of consequential ambiguous calls becomes explicit and documented rather than diffuse.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: if continuous data feeds absorb the file-testing tier, the residual job is model-risk examination of the bank's own AI/credit models, crypto and fintech partnership exams, novel-activity supervision, and board negotiation — work with no clean ground truth. A concrete marker: OCC/Fed examiner handbooks adding mandatory AI/model-governance examination modules and third-party fintech exam procedures staffed by examiners rather than specialists.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "State-level route: NAIC accreditation standards or state insurance codes requiring that a financial condition examination report be signed by a licensed/accredited examiner (CFE/AFE credential) and, for outsourced exams, that the contracted examiner carry personal professional liability — a tightening of the existing NAIC Financial Condition Examiners Handbook sign-off convention into an accreditation requirement.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "No plausible trust_premium lever: the buyer is a supervisory agency or a legislature, not a client choosing between a human and a machine, so there is no market that can pay extra for human examination. Embodiment has no route either — on-site exam presence is a scheduling convention, not physical work in an unpredictable environment. Note also that every lever above protects the commissioned senior examiner seat, not the junior file-review pipeline where most of the 67,830 headcount currently sits; a higher score for the occupation is compatible with a much smaller occupation." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 52580, "wage": 81690 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 58590, "wage": 80180 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 64550, "wage": 81090 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 68210, "wage": 81430 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 60750, "wage": 81410 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 63370, "wage": 82210 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 63440, "wage": 84300 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 62830, "wage": 90400 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 67830, "wage": 94160 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 29, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "personal-financial-advisors", "title": "Personal Financial Advisors", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 52, "median_wage": 105070, "overlap": 74, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Financial Resources", "Service Orientation", "Persuasion" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }