Reviewer onboarding checklist for credit team

A credit analyst who will review an agent's credit work should be onboarded against their lending mandate. The checklist below sets restricted access and red lines on declines and income evidence, shadowing on held applications, reviewer training and exam, a practicum on real files including a decline and a borderline case, and sign-off that matches approval rights to mandate.

What will the reviewer be checking?

The credit agent collects the application, pulls bureau and bank data, spreads financial statements, runs policy rules and drafts a credit memo with a recommendation. That is depth 1 and 2 work. Some lenders let it approve small, clean applications within tight bounds at depth 3. Declines, exceptions to policy and anything above the agent's bounds are held for an analyst.

Two points make credit review exacting. First, the source of each fact. Income the applicant stated on a form is declared; income seen on a bank feed or confirmed by an employer is stronger. A memo that treats declared income as verified can approve a loan that should have been declined. Second, declines need reasons. Assessing the creditworthiness of individuals is listed as high-risk under the EU AI Act, and in the US, ECOA and Regulation B require specific reasons when credit is denied, including when a model is used. A reviewer who sends a decline without checking its reasons fails the customer and the lender.

How do you use the checklist?

The head of credit or a senior analyst owns it. Copy the reviewer's mandate into line 3 before day one. Work through the lines in order; no approvals until line 15. The structure follows what onboarding usually means, adapted to a role where the reviewer's signature carries credit risk. For the overall order of training, see the guide to training teams for AI agents.

The checklist

1. Read-only access to the credit workspace; no approval or decline rights.
2. Agent profile read: data gathering (1), spreading (1), memo drafting (2), approvals within bounds (3), held declines and exceptions.
3. Reviewer's lending mandate copied in: product, maximum exposure, exceptions allowed.
4. Red lines signed: never approve on declared income alone where policy requires verification; never send a decline without checking its stated reasons; never approve outside mandate.
5. Buddy assigned: a certified analyst.
6. Shadowing: two days on held applications.
7. Seen one memo corrected because a declared figure was treated as verified.
8. Seen one decline with its reasons checked against the file.
9. Shared foundation complete; test passed.
10. Reviewer modules complete; written exam passed.
11. Practicum: two weeks of real held files, each confirmed by the buddy.
12. Practicum coverage: a decline, a policy exception, a borderline affordability case and an application with conflicting sources.
13. Incident drill completed.
14. Assessor sign-off; no missed red line.
15. Approval rights recorded within mandate; renewal date set.

Worked example

An illustrative consumer lender brings Sample Analyst Q into a team of seven. The agent approves personal loans up to 3,000 for applicants with a verified bank feed and a clean bureau file. Everything else is held.

Line 3 records her mandate: personal loans up to 15,000, no exceptions in her first three months. In shadowing, her buddy corrects a memo where the agent had used a salary from the application form, declared, because the bank feed had failed to connect; the buddy requests payslips. She also watches a decline where the agent's draft cited "insufficient credit history" when the real reason was high existing debt; the buddy corrects the reason before sending.

Her practicum covers 85 held applications. She declines one with two specific reasons, holds another where the bank feed and the bureau disagreed on monthly commitments, and passes a policy exception up to a senior analyst because it sits outside her mandate. She is signed off in week 7. If her lender also runs a credit control function, its reviewers follow the reviewer onboarding checklist for the credit control team instead.

Where the Academy fits

Pryme Intelligence Academy delivers lines 9, 10 and 14 through Operator: a 40-question, 60-minute exam with a pass mark of 32 of 40 and a two-week practicum with at least 95 in every 100 decisions correct and no missed red line, signed off by a Pryme assessor. A business can make credit approval rights depend on a current certificate, so a lapse pauses them automatically.