Private Credit

Private credit is lending to companies by investment funds rather than by banks. A graduate working in a private credit team helps assess whether a business can afford to repay a loan, builds the financial models behind that decision, drafts the investment papers that persuade the firm's investment committee, and then monitors the loans the fund has already made. The clients are ultimately the fund's investors - pension schemes, insurers, sovereign wealth funds and wealthy individuals - who want a steady income from interest payments without the volatility of the stock market.

Starting salary: £50k–£70k
Live graduate jobs: 9 open now
Main way in: Direct entry to an analyst role at a private credit or direct…
They usually ask for: A strong degree

Approximate graduate salary

Starting salaries vary a great deal by firm type and size. For a graduate analyst at a London-based credit fund or in a bank's leveraged finance team, base pay is typically somewhere around £50,000–£70,000, with a discretionary bonus on top that can be substantial but is not guaranteed. Smaller funds, regional offices and insurance-backed lenders often pay noticeably less - broadly in the £30,000–£45,000 range to start. These are approximations only and the spread across the market is wide.

What you'd actually do

Building and updating financial models in Excel: forecasting a borrower's cash flow and testing whether it still covers interest and repayments if sales fall, costs rise or interest rates move (a 'downside case')
Reading through a data room - the online folder of a company's accounts, contracts, customer lists and legal documents - and pulling out the facts that matter for whether the loan is safe
Drafting sections of an investment committee memo: a written case for or against lending, covering the business, the sector, the financial profile, the risks and the proposed terms
Sitting in on management presentations and calls where the borrower's finance director explains the business, and writing up the follow-up questions

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Working through term sheets and loan documentation alongside external lawyers, particularly the covenants - the promises a borrower makes, such as keeping debt below a set multiple of profits
Portfolio monitoring: tracking the quarterly results of companies the fund has already lent to, updating models and flagging any borrower drifting towards breaching its covenants
Screening new opportunities that come in from banks, debt advisers and private equity firms, and quickly ruling most of them out

How graduates get in

Direct entry to an analyst role at a private credit or direct lending fund, or at the credit arm of a large alternative asset manager. These teams are small and hire few graduates, so openings are limited and competitive.
Moving across after two or three years in investment banking (leveraged finance, debt advisory or restructuring), in a bank's corporate or acquisition finance team, or in a Big Four transaction services or debt advisory group. This is the most common route into private credit and many funds hire almost entirely this way rather than straight from university.
Graduate schemes in leveraged finance or corporate banking at a commercial or investment bank, used deliberately as a training ground - you learn credit analysis and loan documentation, then move to a fund.
Credit ratings agency analyst roles, which give strong grounding in assessing a borrower's ability to repay, and are a recognised feeder into credit investing.

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Spring weeks and summer internships in banking, asset management or markets. These rarely lead directly to a private credit seat but are the usual way of getting the first banking job that leads there.
A small number of insurers, pension managers and multi-manager platforms run graduate schemes that rotate through private markets, including credit. These are less visible than bank schemes but are a genuine route.

What employers ask for

A strong degree - typically a 2:1 or above. Subject matters less than people assume: economics, finance, accounting, maths, engineering and science degrees are all common, and humanities graduates do get in, but you will need to show you can handle accounts and modelling.
Strong A-levels, including maths at many firms. Academic screening tends to be strict because teams are small and hire infrequently.
Demonstrable financial literacy: being able to read a profit and loss account, balance sheet and cash flow statement, and explain how they connect. Societies, self-study, modelling courses or a finance module all count if you can talk about them.
Prior finance experience is close to essential for anything beyond the most junior analyst seat - an internship, placement year, or a few years in banking, audit or ratings.

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Professional exams vary by employer. The CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) is common in asset management-style firms; the ACA or ACCA accountancy qualification is valued if you came via audit or transaction services. Some firms sponsor these, others expect you to do them in your own time, and some care about neither.
Attention to legal detail matters because loan documentation is central to the job - but no law qualification is expected.

Skills that matter

Three-statement financial modelling in Excel

Nearly every decision rests on a model linking a borrower's profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow, and you will be the one building and stress-testing it.

Credit analysis - thinking about downside, not upside

A lender's best case is getting paid back in full, so the whole job is working out what could go wrong and whether the loan survives it.

Reading and interpreting loan documentation

The protections in a credit agreement - covenants, security, what the borrower is allowed to do with cash - determine what you actually recover if the business struggles.

Clear, structured written argument

Investment committee memos have to convince experienced investors in a few pages, and a muddled write-up gets a deal rejected regardless of its merits.

Industry and commercial judgement

You need a view on whether a borrower's market is structurally shrinking or whether its customer contracts are genuinely sticky, which no model will tell you.

Working accurately under deadline pressure

Deals run to tight exclusivity windows, and a transposed figure in a model that reaches committee is a serious error.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Analyst: modelling, data room work, drafting memo sections and portfolio monitoring. Typically two to three years, though smaller funds give responsibility faster and titles are less standardised than in banking.
Associate: owning the model and most of the memo on a deal, running the day-to-day process with lawyers and advisers, and taking the lead on a slice of the existing portfolio.
Vice President / Investment Manager: leading transactions, negotiating terms directly with borrowers and sponsors, and presenting to the investment committee. Reaching this point commonly takes somewhere in the region of five to eight years from graduation, but it varies a lot with fund size and growth.
Director / Principal and then Partner or Managing Director: sourcing deals through relationships with private equity firms and debt advisers, sitting on the investment committee, and increasingly helping raise the next fund from investors.
Common sideways moves: into private equity, special situations or distressed debt, into a borrower as a finance director or treasurer, into debt advisory, or into an investor relations or fundraising role within the same firm.

What people get wrong

“It is basically the same as private equity.”

Private equity buys ownership of companies and profits if they grow in value. Private credit lends to them and profits from interest. The analysis is almost the inverse: private equity asks how good this could get, private credit asks how bad it could get and still be fine. The returns are more predictable and the hours are generally more manageable, though still long during live deals.

“Once a loan is made, the work is done and you move on.”

A large part of the job is monitoring borrowers for years afterwards - quarterly results, covenant tests, requests to amend the loan terms, and occasionally restructuring negotiations when a company gets into trouble. Many analysts spend more time on existing loans than on new ones.

“It is a quiet back-office credit function.”

Private credit funds negotiate directly with company management and private equity owners, compete against banks and each other to win deals, and the senior people are judged on finding transactions as much as analysing them. It is a front-office, commercially driven job.

“There are plenty of graduate schemes if you look hard enough.”

Private credit teams are typically small and many hire experienced people rather than running structured graduate intakes. Realistically, most people arrive after a few years elsewhere in finance, so planning a two-step route in is more sensible than waiting for a direct graduate opening.

Where this varies

"Private credit" covers several quite different jobs. Direct lending funds make senior loans to mid-sized companies, usually ones owned by private equity, and the work is deal-heavy and documentation-heavy. Special situations and distressed teams buy debt in troubled companies and the work is more legal and restructuring-focused. Asset-backed, real estate and infrastructure credit teams lend against specific assets and the modelling is very different again. Fund size also changes the experience: a large global manager will have specialised teams, formal training and clearer titles, while a boutique may have you doing modelling, legal review, portfolio monitoring and investor reporting in the same week. Almost all of this activity in the UK sits in London, with a limited presence in Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham and the Channel Islands, and some fund administration and operations roles located outside London even where the investment team is not.

See all 9 live Private Credit jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.