How does one become a banker with out a college degree? Is there a proper certification track that could be taken or aqusition of any diplomas that are offered at ABA.com?

Start as a teller. You can't buy experience.

Agreed with Beaten Blind.

We have had many individuals progress within our bank by starting at the teller line. Often teller positions are part-time, which can work into your education schedule.

You can still find banks who will assist employees with tuition (tuition reimbursement). That is a win-win for both the bank and the employee. Typically, once a degree or program has been completed, the employee is required to stay at the bank for a specified period of time.

Good luck with your search.

I agree with beaten blind. Starting as a teller is the best way to start. You can use this position to start learning about regs. and to familiarize yourself with the banking system. If you find yourself at an institution you like, you will gain knowledge about their policies and processing systems. Also, as you learn, you will be exposed to most of the positions in the bank and will be able to identify where you would best fit.

I agree with the last two posts. I can tell you that I started out as a Teller and I have since moved into 2 diffrent positions. I am not sure about other banks but where I previously worked there were "inhouse" classes and books you could take to make yourself more knowledgable on the regs and diffrent types of banking, bankruptcy, mortgages and so on. Hope this helps out some.

So start at the bottom and work your way up. I don't know if i can afford this route considering that i would have to take a decent pay cut from my current IT position. Then start all over again. Is there anybody out there who entered the Banking field with out starting from the bottom? If you did, how did you do it?

I didn't start out at the very bottom, but close. You don't need a degree. I worked my way up to an officer position and have worked in a variety of departments, International, Treasury Mgmt, Foreign Exchange and wire. But since you are already in IT, you could probably start out at a very good position within a bank. I know our IT department has a different pay scale than the rest of us. It's much much higher. Many larger banks have web sites listing their open positions. Try googling to find sites.

I would like to transition from an IT possition to a Bank officer position. Is that possible?

There are many officers in the IT department. What do you want? You know that generally banks pay far less than other corporate jobs. I know people working on the line for FMC, GM and Chrysler that make twice what some officers make. I think at my bank officer starts in the low 40's.

At a bank there are many different types of officers - Lending, Trust, Operations, Financial, Audit, Compliance, Marketing, etc.

If you are not clear on the different types of areas in a bank and the area that interest you, I concur, get your feet wet and learn the industry. The teller line is the answer.

Bank officer would be a good start, but ultimately i would like to persue bank management/commercial lending. Getting back to the original question, is it possible for someone to get into the field with out prior experiance? Or if education/certificates/diplomas offered at ABA.com would make a difference in my situation?

If that is your interest, I started out as new accounts and CD's etc. then moved to consumer lending, then to credit analyst, and then to loan officer. I was in a very, I stress very, small bank $40 million. I left there and went to a much bigger bank, $190 million, where I am credit analyst and CO. I took the step to analyst to better equip myself by seeing and analyzing bigger companies to work my way into commercial lending again.

As far as education goes, I would get familiar with accounting, you will need it big time if you want to lend commercial. Accounting is the key, hands down. I do have a college degree, two actually HR and Economics. No laughing!! Econ is useful, really, it is, that is what they told me. Was I naive? fine! it is useless by itself.

Just kidding, I am not mad, I came to grips with my Econ long ago.

Wait a second. You don't need a degree to be a teller? So what are the qualifications of a teller?

If you want lending, you will probably need a degree. I work at one of the largest banks in lending. We make our lenders go to an in-house "credit college". It's very rigorious and if you don't make it thru that you get fired. Also for all those that recommend the teller line, I can tell you here most teller jobs are now part-time and they don't pay for tuition re-imbursement. Perhaps teller training is good in a small bank, but it's not necessary in a big bank. I do not know of anyone that started on the teller line, but we are a 50B plus bank with over twelve thousand employees, maybe even more now. Just do as I suggested earlier, look on the internet unless you live in a very rural and small area which wouldn't have any listings.

Transitioning from the private secotr to banking will depend on many things, including your personality. It is rare in this day and age for someone to become a commercial lender without a colege degree, as many commercial lenders are required to run their own financial spreads. However, I'm not saying it is impossible. You say you are cuyrrently in IT, but that it akin to me saying I'm a banker. Are you in management in IT? Or are you the guy that orders and sets up PCs? Can you program? Are you help desk support? How well can you deal with people? Just as in IT, there are many different positions in banking. If you are not willing to take a pay cut to get your foot in the door, then you may never get your foot in the door. I don't agree that you need to start as a teller, there are others ways to start. You can get in by doing loan review, which teaches you to run the financials, or you can go back office, which is generally called bookkeeping. However, while both of these will teach you a great deal, they don't start out paying well. Can you do it without a degree? Yes, but be prepared to get paid less than your degreed officers.

Jusst to give you an idea, teller pay at my large, urban bank is $10.00 per hour.

Like the anon, I also come in from the lending side. I started out as a loan processor, then made the transition to underwriter and now I am working in Compliance. I graduated with a degree in Finance, but I was surprised to see the number of colleagues who do not hold degrees. In this business, it seems that once you get your foot in the door, the rest is up to you, degree or no degree. However, I will allow one caveat...it does seem that all the managers and above hold at least a Bachelor's degree.

OK - I will retract my statement...at my CU, all managers and above (at least in the lending departments) hold a BS or above. I do not mean to take away from hard work and old-fashioned smarts!

Ghost - I am in bank management now - started out in Customer Service but I have a degree in Finance. I can't imagine (certainly not at my bank) that a bank would hire someone without bank experience (possibly without the degree depending on experience) directly into an Officer position. If it is a loan officer you want to be, this just doesn't happen because you must have a deep level of understanding of bank principles, debt ratios, borrower capacity, etc. just to be a consumer lender. If you are wanting to be a commercial lender, there are many addiitonal requirements such as cash flow analysis, industry trend analysis, collateral valuation, and so much more. Commercial lenders generally manage many multi-million dollar portfolios - most banks simply are not going to give you that kind of responsibility without a proven track record in banking. Track records cannot be built without experience. While your current job obviously requires knowledge, it just plainly is not the kind of knowledge that would be required as a bank officer managing the bank's financial assets. If you truely want to get into this area, speak with your HR officer about taking some banking courses, attending a banking school, or other opportunities for education. Good Luck.

To move from a nonbank IT position to a lending officer position would be difficult. I would suggest you make the transition to banking by starting in a bank's IT department, take any and all courses offered in your area - many local banking organizations offer courses and the ABA offers courses on line. Provide excellent customer service to your internal customers and if, after a year, you still find banking interesting - make your desires for a different position known. BUT, and it's a big but, in my 17 years in banking a lot has changed, I don't see too many people now that work their way up to a management level position without a degree. We have not hired a management person in 3-4 years that did not have a college degree so look into going back to school and getting your degree.

Good Luck!

I started out as a teller with no experience. I had been laid off from a factory where I had worked for 2 years. I have taken classes through ABA and moved up to Branch Manager. All with in 3 years.

A lot depends on what you consider to be a "banker" nowadays. With our sales emphasis, as long as you can communicate clearly and pursuasively, you would be a good fit. If you want to actually handle money and get involved in operations, there's nothing like experience. A degree can help you get the job over someone who doesn't have it, but once you're in the company, then it's performance that matters. good luck...

I had just retired out of the Navy with almost 23 years and 15 years of that was in supervisory roles. I happened to get out at the same time that a small bank was opening up a new branch. While I was applying for a home loan, the loan officer asked what my plans were. I told him that I had sent out some resume's but I had no set direction of what I wanted to do. All that I knew is that it had to be challenging because I didn't want to be bored. Next thing I knew I was being interviewed for the Branch Manager job. Trained as a teller during the construction of the branch and when it opened I still did teller duties quite frequently. This branch also has a VP Loan Officer assigned to it. That was close to two years ago and I am now being groomed to become the CO.

Bottom line was that I lucked out on the timing of my retirement and the bank was looking for someone to manage people.

Seadevil

I'm a banker w/o a college degree. I did start college and take the basics (english, history, biology...) at a community college and was into the 1st year of an applied business associates degree plan when I left school for personal reasons. Now that I think back about those classes... they were basically the same type of course work I did in high school. I started banking as a temporary receptionist. From there I was hired part-time then promoted to PT accounts payable. Then I left banking to be a stay at home mom. Less then a year later I reapplied(again for personal reasons)and I was hired temp in bookkeeping. Later that week, I was then hired again as PT accounts payable then promoted 7 months later to fulltime bookkeeper (only one). I did that for about 5-6 years and then accounting assistant for another few months after that. About 6-7 years ago I was promoted to Assistant Cashier (accounting dept) and Compliance officer (laws and regulations). Just last year I was promoted to Assistant Vice President and still CO. Everything I've learned has been through self-teaching, hands on training, networking and some schools/seminars that the bank has sent me to. I still want to go back to school and finish what I started but I don't want to sacrifice my family time right now. Meanwhile, everyday I try to learn something new...this website has helped me keep up with that. Working my way up has taken lots of hard work and dedication but I enjoy the challenge. If this is a field you wish to pursue, my advice is be open to change, adapt to it and always be ready to learn.

BTW, like someone mentioned before, many banks do promote education by reimbursing their employees for college tuition. If anything, they at least offer in-house training and outside seminars for their employees.

I'm a VP without a degree. I was also a commercial lender without a degree, and suprising as it might be...I can manage a spreadsheet without the degree

I was a chef prior to becoming a banker. (I wanted a job without weekends and holidays) I moved to a lower end position in loan servicing and progressed from there. I was chosen for management training with one of the largest banks in the nation, without a degree. I worked harder than some I suppose, but so can you.

There are banks who have commercial lending training programs. In ours, we had an IT tech, a gentleman from the mail room, myself (from a credit analyst position) three daughters of execs from teller positions, and a few other fillers in the group.

I received my VP because I showed I'd work hard (and proved my success via sales). I took positions EVERYWHERE but they were always a rise up the chain, and took as much training as I could get.

My advice would be to find a large bank and work in their IT department. Takin any and all training inhouse and outside you can get, and apply when you're ready, or hope for a management training program. It's not easy...something like 800 people applied for our program year and 12 were hired. But it is possible. (I'm not so old that this was millions of years ago)

I agree with Dawnie. I am also a VP without a degree. I started out as a loan secretary, learned everything I could, and worked my way up. I now do commercial, real estate and consumer lending.

In my experience, people have earned officer position by starting at the bottom and moving up, or they are new hires with degrees. Both take time and hard work. You have to start somewhere.

I did both LadyLuck. I started as a teller, then a loan clerk and am now doing loan compliance, commercial and real estate underwriting and being groomed for doing compliance for the bank as a whole when our Compliance Officer retires in the next year or 2. I also happen to have a BS in Management and Technology which helped me go up that chain in just 4 years. I am proud both of my degree and of my hard work to get where I am now.

I received my associates degree about 6 years ago and have been in banking for 25 years. I was originally hired in 1979 because I could type. I worked hard, proved myself, and now I've accepted a job with a consulting company to be a compliance consultant.

How Cool!!! Skittles, who did you end up going with? Anyone I know??

I was getting out of public practice (accounting) and went to work for one of my clients as a senior in their internal audit department.

I started in the Operations Dept. At the time, I barely knew the difference between a debit and credit. But I worked hard, really tried to learn every little corner of the department (which is A LOT!). Now, I am the supervisor. I keep plugging away at it but the end result isn't a title....it's that I still like what I do.

All of you crack me up. The original poster wanted to know how to become a banker without a college degree. Easy! Go fill out an employment application. You have to get hired first!!!!!!!

I've always thought there's a difference between working in a bank and being a banker. It's like the difference between being a cook and being a chef.

Here is my two cents.

Get on the phone and schedule some face time with Bankers in your area. Tell them what you want to do and see what they may be able to do to help you get there. I think it is great that many have provided you with numerous answers to your questions but NO ONE other than you knows your situation. Do you have a bank account??? That's your foot in the door to ask questions. Go to your baqnk one day and while your making a deposit or withdrawing money, ask the teller whoi is in charge (branch manager??). Then request to speak to that person. During your brief conversation, ask the questions that you have asked the group. I promise you, would will get great answers because a personal testimony from someone in the position you want to be is better than any response you may get from this group.

So even w/out a college degree, all of you had to WORK your way up. You weren't handed the top job when you walked in the door. I think that is the point that needs to be made here. The degree gets you there faster, but you can work your way up as well. It seems like the original poster wanted to do neither of these two things!

Sue, if I knew then what I know now, I definitely would have gone to law school.
I'm one of those who worked my way up but it hasn't been easy and it has taken a long time. I can say, experience is the best teacher, but after 20 + years, the pay is still not that great. In today's world, moving into a lending officer position from outside without a degree is virtually impossible.

Low pay, long hours, hard work... these are what we give up in response to having a job in an industry that doesn't have a lot of dynamic change, job insecurity or layoffs.

On second thought, never mind.

What do you mean, no job insecurity or layoffs? Guess you haven't been thru a merger. Banks are constantly merging and people are losing their jobs, some who've been around 20 or 30 years. Fortunately I kept mine after the last merge, but I saw a lot of good people go.