How to Become a Ship Banker?

If you have a common love for ships and for financing them, not surprisingly, ship finance would be a good career choice for you. The role of a ship banker is to manage funds of those related to the maritime industry. A job revolving completely around financing services, the ship banker career is the field to be working in if you like playing with numbers.

Who is a ship banker?

To put it in the simplest terms, as mentioned earlier, a ship banker is a person who takes care of financed related to maritime industries. His work is to manage the flow of funds into and from a particular sector. From advising his customers about their probable maritime investments to regulating funds to various projects to making new projects from a financial point of view is all a part of banker career.

He is the one who suggests you about the probable new ventures or prevents you from taking too high risks.

What are the qualifications to become a ship banker?

For a career in ship finance, you need to have a strong background of finance and accountings. It is important that every person aspiring for a banker career in maritime industry should have adequate knowledge of marine world and financial aspects of the same. However, there are specialized courses available that are devoted to ship finance alone. Pursuing a Shipping finance management degree or a diploma in ship finance are few of such courses now offered in many parts of the world. Although they are not a mandatory field for many companies seeking ship bankers, but with rising popularity of this sector, need for such specialization has been rising as well.

Besides these qualifications, there are some basic qualities that must be possessed by a ship banker. Having a good hold on the financial concepts would be the first but having good communication skills is just as important. A banker must be able to talk to his clients easily to communicate his knowledge in the best possible way and to understand about their expectations and needs.

What is a ship banker’s job profile?

Like any banker career job, a ship banker’s job is a lot of sedentary work, around lots of numbers, while interacting with a number of people. To make it more precise, a ship banker is the one who looks into all financial aspects right from offering loans to shipping companies to looking into accounts sometimes. They also offer their customers advise on matters related to shipping while preventing them from taking too brash decisions (although banker compensation is present to ensure that).

The specific knowledge of minute facts possessed by bankers helps clients making sound decisions. However, sometimes bankers are blamed for leading their clients to too risky ventures. When that is believed to happen, clients are advised to have enough information on the subject along with knowledge of concepts like banker compensation.

What are the career opportunities in ship finance?

The career opportunities in this sector alone are many, considering the growth of ship financing. However, this being a specialized field of finance offers a slower growth rate than other financing sectors. But for those interested and with suitable qualifications can find a lot of job opportunities here.

A ship banker can easily find a job in a bank or a financial institution that deals with maritime industry financing as well. They can be nationalized banks or private firms. Some maritime companies that work on exceptionally large scale may also have openings for a ship banker. Or they can also work as individual ship banking consultants but that is a rare type due to the highly specialized nature of this career.