Banking Professional CV example

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.

1. Profile — Three or four lines positioning you for the role.
2. Core Skills — Grouped skills, for example "Languages" and "Tooling".
3. Professional Experience — Paid roles, in reverse chronological order.
4. Professional Qualifications — Completed certifications with the issuing body.
5. Education — Degrees, diplomas and school-leaving qualifications.
6. Regulatory Training — Structured training posts and courses.
7. 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.

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

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.

Guides that go deeper

This page applies general CV advice to one field. The full treatment of each part is here:

• How to Write an Accountant CV — Qualification status first, then the reporting cycle, the systems and the framework. In that order, for a reason.
• How to Write a Professional Summary — Four lines at the top of the page that decide whether the rest gets read. A method, and the three ways they usually go wrong.
• How to Describe Work Experience — The difference between listing duties and demonstrating impact, and a repeatable way to rewrite any weak bullet point.

Questions about banking professional CVs