Bank Examiner Job Description, Skills, and Salary
Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of a bank examiner. Feel free to use our job description template to produce your own. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as a bank examiner.
Who is a Bank Examiner?
A Bank Examiner look into financial institutions to ensure they are secure and sound and to uphold local and national regulations. They plan audits, examine rules and practices, examine records, and conduct manager and employee interviews. They create thorough reports that banks can use to become stronger.
The primary responsibility of a bank examiner is to ensure that customers do not lose the money they have entrusted to banks. Bank examiners protect account holders. Additionally, they defend the federal and state governments, which are in charge of covering financial institutions.
A bank examiner is responsible for auditing different financial institutions. Bank examiners are responsible for ensuring that banks adhere to the various laws, rules, and regulations they are required to obey. Examiners look into documents and reports to ensure banks obey legal obligations.
Bank examiners look over all essential documents and reports to assess a bank’s financial health. They then compile all of this data for the business or government organization where they are employed. In addition to producing reports for their own companies, bank examiners typically work with numerous banks and review all financial records to make suggestions and improvements to the financial organizations they have researched.
Bank examiners may look at every aspect of the banks they regulate, including payroll records, hiring procedures, the quantity of cash on hand, how tellers handle customer requests, and all other methods when they perform their duties in an auditing capacity. To do their duties effectively, they must understand how banks and the entire financial system operate.
As bank examiners advance in their careers, they may take supervisory-type positions. They may engage with the highest management at the banks they are auditing and manage a team of auditors. Examiners might serve as a point of contact for the government organization they work for and the personnel at the financial institutions they are researching. They might always be involved in auditing or supervising to some extent, but they might also get more involved in making suggestions for each bank’s improvement.
Bank examiners monitor loan activity to ensure that borrowers are treated well. They make sure that banks only offer loans to customers who are probably able to repay them. They assist borrowers in avoiding predatory loans, which can cost borrowers money and harm their credit ratings but may make banks money through excessive interest payments. Additionally, examiners ensure that banks don’t treat customers differently based on their color, ethnicity, or other traits.
Since bank examiners frequently collaborate with groups, they may grow close and rely on one another to get through whenever they travel for work.
Bank examiners operate in temporary offices with coworkers who could feel conflicted about being probed. However, the task itself can be exciting and fulfilling.
Bank examiners analyze the stability of financial organizations. Their responsibility is to make banks and other financial organizations provide secure loans and have enough cash on hand to cover unforeseen losses. These processes aid in maintaining the stability of the financial system as a whole.
Bank Examiner Job Description
Below are the bank examiner job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write a bank examiner job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.
- Check the institution’s balance sheets, operating revenue and expense accounts, and loan documents to ensure the assets and liabilities are what they seem to be.
- Create standards for practices and policies that adhere to new and updated regulations.
- Conduct risk-focused financial examinations to determine the solvency and compliance of banks and other financial institutions.
- Inform and enlighten clients on the laws, rules, and regulations.
- Keep an eye on the health of banks and other financial institutions.
- Prepare reports that describe the security and soundness of an institution.
- Review the records of the directors’ and managers’ meetings.
- Teach other inspectors how to do financial examinations
- Review and evaluate new rules and laws to assess how they will affect a particular institution.
- Establish standards that adhere to new laws.
- Write reports and clearly explain the findings of their investigation to clients.
- Send letters to regulated-entity staff to request documents and explain decisions.
Qualifications
- A bachelor’s degree in banking, accounting, finance, economics, or related course
- Experience through an internship for like a year
- A master’s degree in either business administration or accounting
- Having a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) or equivalent depending on your country is optional but may give you an edge
Essential Skills
A bank examiner’s duties as part of their work include making sure banks understand and abide by the law to protect bank customers. As a result, possessing both hard and soft talents can help you have a successful job.
Among the skills that make a bank examiner successful are:
- Analytical
The capacity to examine facts and information is an analytical skill. When reviewing financial statements, checking bank records, and assessing regulatory compliance, bank examiners apply their analytical skills. You should have good analytical skills to help make wise conclusions. Additionally, you may need to justify your decisions to approve or reject applications, which calls for good analysis.
- Auditing
The process of auditing entails checking financial documents for accuracy and completeness. When reviewing a bank’s records, bank examiners employ auditing techniques that might assist them in determining if the bank has sufficient capital to operate securely or if remedial action is necessary. Evaluation of the veracity of data supplied by the bank’s management team is a component of auditing.
- Communication
Bank examiners write and interpret reports about their findings. This ensures bank officials can follow recommendations and help their employers understand their judgments.
The ability to present knowledge in a way that others can understand is known as communication. As a bank examiner, you might have to interact with financial institution staff members and explain why you are looking over their records or raising concerns about specific areas of their operations. Your ability to communicate will help the institution realize what it should do to improve its procedures after you have made your observations.
- Compliance
Compliance is the capacity to adhere to laws and norms. As a bank examiner, you must ensure that banks abide by all relevant laws and regulations. This calls for meticulousness and an awareness of how financial institutions work. You might need to offer advice or feedback to assist banks in strengthening their compliance efforts.
- Detail-oriented
Your ability to pay attention to detail will help you do your job well. You must check financial documents carefully and evaluate a bank’s general health as a bank examiner. This entails paying close attention to specifics like the accuracy with which a bank has documented transactions or whether there are any inconsistencies with account balances.
- Financial modeling
The ability to construct and analyze financial models and tools banks employ to evaluate their financial health is known as financial modeling. To assess a bank’s financial situation and determine whether it can continue to operate securely, bank examiners require this ability. They may practice building models to hone their skills since they also employ financial modeling while producing reports on their findings.
- Financial analysis
Understanding how to evaluate financial data and use it to influence decisions is the essence of financial analysis. You might have to conduct extensive data analysis as a bank examiner to ascertain whether banks are correctly adhering to legislation. You can protect depositors’ money by identifying potential hazards with the aid of this skill.
- Financial and legal knowledge
This calls for a background in comprehending finance rules and an ability to learn, given how frequently banking and financial regulations change.
Employers anticipate that bank inspectors will possess good analytical abilities to ascertain compliance or suggest actions for more effective procedures because they analyze and evaluate banking operations.
- Knowledge of banking procedures
Bank examiners need expertise in finance, banking, and particular banking procedures to judge whether banks are carrying out their investigations correctly.
- Math prowess
Bank examiners need solid fundamental math skills to monitor balance sheets and determine whether the bank’s or another financial institution’s available cash is dangerously low.
- Organization
The ability to manage files and pieces of information is called organization. As a bank examiner, you might have to go over a lot of information, like financial records, contracts, and other papers. If you have this skill, then you can find what you need quickly and effectively. It also ensures you don’t misplace any crucial paperwork or documentation throughout the working day.
- Problem-solving
Having the capacity to recognize and address problems is problem-solving. You might have to address issues with regulatory compliance or accounting irregularities in your role as a bank examiner. You might need to find out why this happened and how to rectify it if, for instance, an institution’s account has inadequate funds.
- Risk Management
Bank examiners use their risk management knowledge to evaluate operational hazards. They examine financial data and conduct interviews to check if a bank is law-abiding. This allows them to spot potential issues that can compromise the security of client cash. Bank examiners also create risk-mitigation techniques to protect the banking system’s stability.
- Time Management
Time management is the capacity to schedule and carry out work in a way that guarantees you meet deadlines. It’s crucial to effectively manage your time as a bank examiner to finish all of your tasks on time. You need to manage your schedule, as it will ensure that you arrive at each place on time.
- Writing prowess
Bank examiners frequently write reports on the stability and safety of the financial institution. They must be able to communicate technical information.
How to Become a Bank Examiner
A mix of education and relevant job experience is needed to become a bank examiner. The fundamental road to a job as a bank examiner follows the same steps, while the precise expertise required for the role varies based on the area and company:
Get a Bachelor’s Degree
A bachelor’s degree in banking, finance, economics, or accounting is required in this career route. Although a master’s degree in one of the two subjects can help you get higher positions with more responsibility, this is the minimum for entry-level bank examiner jobs.
Gain Work Experience
You still have opportunities to become a bank examiner if you have a degree that is not in finance or accounting but is in a related profession. You can supplement a related degree with a few years of banking and finance experience.
Even if you have a bachelor’s degree in the desired fields of finance and accounting, experience in the industry can help your resume when you’re looking for a job as a bank examiner because it demonstrates your capacity to put your knowledge of the industry to use.
Obtain your Certified Public Accountant (CPA) designation or Its Equivalent in Your Country of Residence
To work as a bank examiner, you may need a CPA certification. Consider looking out the prerequisites in your state before registering for the CPA exam because each state has its unique criteria. To obtain the CPA designation, candidates must pass the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) CPA exam. If you are not in the United States, you can get certified in the recognized designated in your country.
Go for Training
Most organizations and authorities demand some training to become a bank examiner. This changes depending on where you want to work, so research the organization’s needs.
There are training courses that go over different topics in-depth, including loan analysis. You must pass an exam to demonstrate your understanding of the essential financial principles and legal requirements related to each training program.
Keep Learning and be Updated
Most employers prefer bank examiners to be up to date on financial rules and regulations in addition to your qualifications and training programs. Effective bank examiners stay up to date with the knowledge required by their industry to conduct their job effectively because the laws in the field are quite specific and change regularly.
Where to Work as a Bank Examiner
Bank examiners can work in activities associated with securities, commodities contracts, and other investments.
They can also work with federal authorities, businesses, enterprises, and state governments. They may need to travel for work when the need arises.
Bank Examiner Salary Scale
The average compensation for a Bank Examiner is $77,255, although the salary range falls between $67,600 to $91,200. The salary range can vary significantly depending on various factors, including education, credentials, skills, and years of experience.
