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What does a Commercial Banker do?

The role of a commercial banker is to provide financial services to individuals, small businesses and large organizations. Typical services supplied to customers include: bank accounts; cash handling; check clearing; credit and debit cards; loans (including mortgages); foreign currency and travelers' checks; and insurance products.

Most commercial bankers are based in high street branches dealing with private and corporate customers on a daily basis. There are also many other opportunities within commercial banking including working with telephone, Internet and digital TV banking, credit and debit card services, credit and risk, personnel, marketing and designing strategies to keep the bank ahead of the competition.

The typical work activities vary depending on which area of commercial banking you are based in.

Typical activities of a branch manager are:

• Managing staff


• Checking customer accounts and seeing if action is needed to deal with overdrawn accounts


• Studying loan proposals and deciding whether to approve them


• Meeting customers, establishing their needs and advising which services would best help them including loans, insurance policies and savings plans


• Visiting and building links with local businesses


• Organizing area sales targets

Typical activities for workers in specialized areas are:

Personnel - recruiting and training staff, planning career development of trainees, advising students about careers in banking

Marketing - designing campaigns to promote new and existing services, researching customers' banking habits to find new opportunities for the bank

Operations - processing transactions and loans, researching new technology or different working methods to increase the bank's efficiency

Electronic Services - writing a new section on the bank's web site, developing interactive digital TV banking services

Card Services - authorizing and issuing cards, managing transactions

Credit and Risk - analyzing loans and deciding whether to approve them.