Banking covers a wide range of roles, and the CV has to place you within it quickly: relationship management, credit analysis, operations, treasury or branch leadership. A reviewer who cannot tell within two lines which one you do will move on.
Whatever the specialism, three things carry disproportionate weight: the size of the book or portfolio you handle, the quality of the credit decisions attached to it, and your conduct record under the regulatory regime you work in. Banking is one of the few fields where "no upheld complaints" and "no adverse audit findings" are genuinely worth a line.
This example is written for a commercial relationship manager with six years in a UK bank.
Opens in the editor with this content already filled in, so you can replace it with your own.
Sara Ahmed
Commercial Relationship Manager · SME Lending & Credit Analysis
sara.ahmed@example.co.uk+44 7700 900512Manchester, United Kingdomlinkedin.com/in/example-sara-ahmed
Profile
Commercial relationship manager with six years in SME banking, currently managing 84 clients with £46m of lending and £31m of deposits. Grew net lending by £7.2m over two years with no accounts migrating to watchlist, and present credit papers up to £3m to regional committee. Chartered Banker Institute certified.
Pennine Commercial Bank · Manchester, United Kingdom
•Manage a portfolio of 84 SME clients with £46m of lending and £31m of deposits across manufacturing, professional services and agriculture.
•Grew net lending by £7.2m over two years through 19 new-to-bank clients, with no accounts migrating to watchlist during the period.
•Prepare and present credit papers up to £3m to regional credit committee; 31 of 34 submissions approved without further information requested.
•Restructured facilities for a £9m turnover food manufacturer facing a seasonal working capital squeeze, moving overdraft dependency onto invoice finance and reducing peak borrowing by £1.4m.
•Completed 84 annual KYC refreshes and three enhanced due diligence reviews on higher-risk structures, with no overdue reviews at any month end across two years.
•Coach two assistant relationship managers on credit paper preparation.
Credit AnalystJune 2019 – December 2021
Pennine Commercial Bank · Leeds, United Kingdom
•Analysed statutory and management accounts for lending applications between £100k and £5m, producing recommendations with sensitivity on interest cover and debt service.
•Reviewed 30 to 40 annual credit renewals a quarter, identifying covenant breaches and recommending watchlist action where appropriate.
•Wrote the internal note on assessing agricultural clients with volatile input costs, which was adopted as regional guidance.
Professional Qualifications
Chartered Banker Institute – Professional Banker CertificateSeptember 2021
Chartered Banker Institute
CISI Level 3 Certificate in Financial Services Risk and RegulationFebruary 2020
CISI
Education
BA (Hons) Business ManagementSeptember 2015 – June 2018
University of Leeds · Leeds, United Kingdom
Upper Second Class (2:1)
Languages
EnglishNative
UrduC1
ArabicA2
Banking Professional example on the Executive layout. All details are fictional and shown for demonstration only.
What recruiters expect
Before writing anything, it helps to know what the person reading is checking for. In this field that is usually a short, specific list:
Portfolio size in value and number of clients, and the segment (SME, mid-corporate, personal).
Credit competence: what you can approve, what you recommend, and the quality of the book.
Regulatory awareness appropriate to the role - Consumer Duty, SMCR, AML, KYC.
Commercial results: income growth, new-to-bank clients, cross-sell, retention.
Systems and the products you have actually structured, not just sold.
Recommended CV structure
This is the running order the example uses. It is a starting point rather than a rule, but the order reflects what tends to be read first in this profession.
Profile — Three or four lines positioning you for the role.
Core Skills — Grouped skills, for example "Languages" and "Tooling".
Professional Experience — Paid roles, in reverse chronological order.
Professional Qualifications — Completed certifications with the issuing body.
Education — Degrees, diplomas and school-leaving qualifications.
Regulatory Training — Structured training posts and courses.
Languages — Spoken languages with CEFR levels.
Sections worth adding
Recognition — Internal performance awards are meaningful in banking if you name the measure.
Professional Memberships — Chartered Banker Institute membership is worth listing.
Skills worth including
Grouped rather than listed in one block. Grouping makes a long list readable and shows that you can tell the difference between the things you use daily and the things you have touched.
Beyond the technical list: Difficult conversations about credit decisions, Working with credit risk teams, Networking with accountants and brokers, Coaching junior relationship managers. These belong inside your experience bullets, demonstrated, rather than in a list of adjectives.
Example professional summary
Three or four lines, positioned for the role rather than describing your personality. Two versions you can adapt:
Commercial relationship manager with six years in SME banking, currently managing 84 clients with £46m of lending and £31m of deposits. Grew net lending by £7.2m over two years with no accounts migrating to watchlist, and present credit papers up to £3m to regional committee. Chartered Banker Institute certified.
Business banking professional moving from credit analysis into relationship management. Strong on financial statement analysis and facility structuring, with a clean conduct and KYC record across four years.
Writing your experience
The difference between a CV that gets a call and one that does not is almost always in the bullet points. Each pair below shows a real rewrite of the kind of line that appears on most CVs in this field.
Weak
Managed a portfolio of business customers.
Stronger
Manage a portfolio of 84 SME clients with £46m of lending and £31m of deposits, across manufacturing, professional services and agriculture.
Portfolio value, client count and sector mix - the three facts a banking reviewer wants first.
Weak
Grew the lending book.
Stronger
Grew net lending by £7.2m over two years through 19 new-to-bank clients, with no accounts migrating to watchlist during the period.
Pairs growth with credit quality, which is what distinguishes a good lender from a busy one.
Weak
Prepared credit applications.
Stronger
Prepare and present credit papers up to £3m to the regional credit committee, including cash flow forecasting, sensitivity on interest cover and covenant recommendations; 31 of 34 submissions approved without further information requested.
Shows authority level, technical content and a quality measure for the papers themselves.
Weak
Followed compliance procedures.
Stronger
Completed 84 annual KYC refreshes and three enhanced due diligence reviews on higher-risk structures, with no overdue reviews at any month end across two years.
Turns a compliance obligation into a measurable record of reliability.
Taken from the example
The sample CV for this profession is fully written. A few sections from it, so you can see the level of specificity that works:
Experience
Commercial Relationship Manager, Pennine Commercial Bank
Manage a portfolio of 84 SME clients with £46m of lending and £31m of deposits across manufacturing, professional services and agriculture.
Grew net lending by £7.2m over two years through 19 new-to-bank clients, with no accounts migrating to watchlist during the period.
Prepare and present credit papers up to £3m to regional credit committee; 31 of 34 submissions approved without further information requested.
Restructured facilities for a £9m turnover food manufacturer facing a seasonal working capital squeeze, moving overdraft dependency onto invoice finance and reducing peak borrowing by £1.4m.
Education
BA (Hons) Business Management, University of Leeds — Upper Second Class (2:1)
Certifications and registration
Chartered Banker Institute – Professional Banker Certificate — Chartered Banker Institute
CISI Level 3 Certificate in Financial Services Risk and Regulation — CISI
Common mistakes
Targets without context
"Exceeded target by 120%" means nothing without the target. Give the income figure or the portfolio size.
No credit quality signal
Anyone can grow a lending book. Growing it without impairments is the achievement. Mention arrears, watchlist migration or default rates if the record supports it.
Product lists instead of structuring
Listing products reads as a sales CV. Describing how you structured a facility to a client’s working capital cycle reads as a banker.
Silence on regulation
Conduct and financial crime responsibilities are central to the role. Omitting them is conspicuous to anyone hiring in a regulated bank.
Naming clients
Client confidentiality applies. Describe the sector and the size of the business, never the name.
ATS considerations
Applicant tracking systems behave differently by sector, and generic advice is often wrong for a given field. These points are specific to banking professional applications:
Spell out "know your customer (KYC)" and "anti-money laundering (AML)" in full at least once.
Name the segment explicitly: "SME", "mid-corporate", "personal banking". These are hard filters.
Include "credit analysis" as a phrase even if your title is relationship management.
State the regulatory regime relevant to your market - Consumer Duty and SMCR in the UK, or the local equivalent.
The Minimal ATS layout is built for this, and the ATS guide covers what parsers do to a file in more detail.
Questions about banking professional CVs
How do I write about clients without breaching confidentiality?
Use the sector, the turnover band and the facility type. "A £9m turnover food manufacturer" is descriptive and identifies nobody.
Which qualifications matter in banking?
In the UK, Chartered Banker Institute qualifications and the CISI certificates are the most recognised. For credit-focused roles, a formal credit skills programme carries real weight.
Should I mention regulatory references?
You do not need to discuss your regulatory reference on the CV, but a clean conduct record stated factually - no upheld complaints, no overdue reviews - is a legitimate and uncommon strength.
Is branch experience a disadvantage when moving to commercial banking?
No, provided you translate it. Volume of customer contact, cash handling controls and complaint resolution are all relevant; frame them in credit and risk language.