Credit manager

You would decide whether your company should lend money to a person or business or should let them have goods or services before they have paid for them.

If you do give them credit, you’d also agree with them how quickly they should pay back the money they owe your company.

You could work for a finance company or for any company that sells goods or services.

You’d lead a team which would assess whether a customer might borrow the money and not pay it back, or take goods and services and not pay for them.

You could focus either on commercial credit where you’d deal with business customers or consumer credit where you’d deal with money borrowed by members of the public.

In either area, you would:

• Check customers’ credit rating with banks and credit reference agencies
• Decide whether to offer credit
• Set up the terms of credit and make sure that the customer pays on time
• Negotiate repayment plans
• Stop supplies of goods if business customers are late in paying
• Start legal action to recover debts if necessary

In insolvency or bankruptcy cases you would liaise with other companies who are owed money, arrange for sheriff officers to reclaim the goods, or deal with the liquidators if a company’s assets are to be sold off.

You’d manage a team of credit controllers or accounting technicians.

In a smaller company, you might also do general accounting and administrative work.