Credit Manager

Credit Manager

Company: Celtic Bank
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah (Onsite or Hybrid)

About Celtic Bank

Headquartered in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, Celtic Bank was named a top SBA lender in the nation in 2025! Celtic Bank is a leading nationwide lender specializing in SBA 7(a), SBA 504, USDA B&I, express loans, asset-based loans, commercial real estate loans, and commercial construction loans.

The Role

The Credit Manager is responsible for leading the underwriting and portfolio management team with a primary focus on people leadership, asset quality, and credit risk mitigation across the Energy, Infrastructure, and Project Finance platform. This role ensures consistent execution of underwriting, servicing, and—when necessary—credit restructuring strategies to protect the bank’s capital and optimize portfolio performance.

The Credit Manager drives accountability for underwriting quality, portfolio monitoring, and servicing execution, while developing and coaching team members to perform at a high level. The role also has direct responsibility for maintaining asset quality through proactive risk identification, disciplined monitoring, and timely intervention, including restructuring or modification strategies where appropriate.

In addition, this position provides clear, accurate, and timely reporting to senior leadership and executive stakeholders on portfolio performance, emerging risks, and mitigation actions.

Essential Job Functions

• Lead and develop the underwriting and portfolio management team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and establishing a culture of accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Own overall asset quality of the portfolio, ensuring risks are proactively identified, assessed, and mitigated through underwriting discipline, servicing actions, and restructuring where necessary.
• Ensure consistent and appropriate underwriting standards, credit structuring, and risk assessment practices across all new originations.
• Oversee ongoing portfolio surveillance, including covenant compliance, borrower performance, reporting, and early warning indicators, with clear escalation protocols.
• Direct and support credit intervention strategies, including amendments, waivers, modifications, and restructurings, to minimize losses and optimize recoveries.
• Review and approve underwriting and portfolio analysis work product, ensuring accuracy, completeness, and alignment with bank credit standards and risk appetite.
• Establish and enforce portfolio management cadence and controls, including periodic reviews, asset quality grading, and action planning for underperforming credits.
• Provide executive-level reporting and insights on portfolio health, risk trends, watchlist assets, criticized/classified exposures, and mitigation strategies.
• Partner with senior leadership, credit risk, and loan committee to ensure risk-adjusted decisioning and alignment with strategic objectives.
• Coordinate cross-functionally with originations, closing, operations, and risk teams to execute transactions and servicing actions efficiently and consistently.
• Drive process improvements and standardization across underwriting, monitoring, and servicing workflows to enhance scalability and control.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, economics, business, or a related field (or equivalent relevant experience).
• Minimum of five (5) years of experience in commercial loan underwriting, credit analysis, or transaction structuring, with the ability to apply credit judgment in a sales-driven origination environment.
• Working knowledge of portfolio servicing fundamentals, including covenant compliance monitoring, borrower reporting, and ongoing loan agreement oversight.
• Demonstrated leadership capability, including delegating workloads, coaching staff, and managing performance in a deadline-driven environment.
• Strong technical credit skills, including the ability to evaluate complex risk scenarios, solve underwriting problems, and apply sound credit judgment.
• Ability to implement and maintain consistent underwriting/credit standards across a team, including quality assurance routines and training disciplines.
• Demonstrated or equivalent experience overseeing annual loan/asset reviews, including completion of Annual Performance Review deliverables, coordinating management review/approvals, and ensuring final documentation is retained in the credit file.
• Ability to establish and enforce portfolio monitoring cadence and controls (e.g., covenant tracking, borrower reporting timelines, and escalation routines), ensuring issues are identified and action plans are developed when performance deteriorates.
• Proven ability to partner cross-functionally with origination/sales, underwriting/credit, operations, closing, and risk/compliance to execute transactions and ongoing monitoring expectations efficiently.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision
• 401(k) with employer match
• Life and long-term disability coverage
• HSA and FSA plans
• Holidays and paid time off requests
• Robust wellness program (catered meals three times a week, lunch and learns, and onsite gym).

Physical and Other Requirements

This job operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets, and fax machines.

• Stationary Work: Frequently required to stand; walk; use hands to type, handle documents, and perform other office-related duties. Exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects.
• Mobility: Occasionally move between work sites and inside the office to access file cabinets, office machinery, etc.
• Communicate: Regularly required to talk or hear and will frequently communicate with others. Must be able to read, write, and understand fluent English.
• Work Model: Fully Onsite or Hybrid work model. All employees, regardless of location, may be required to travel to the Salt Lake City office for mandatory company meetings, events, or related occasions.
• Utah-based employees: Hybrid work schedule available after initial training period in our Salt Lake City, Utah office – department and job requirements will determine eligibility.

Celtic Bank is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable federal, state and local fair employment practices laws.