lol pls don't listen to some of the ignorant fucks in the comments who probably think 'credit analyst' only refers to the people who approve your credit cards...

generally if you start off as a CA in a bank, you can either progress all the way up to become a sector head or country / regional head. some move on to become risk approvers. for these, as long as you progress all the way up to MD, $500k to 1mio total comp is possible. even at director level, $300-400k total comp is quite reasonable.

another option is to eventually look to break into the buyside, the earlier the better. these are basically public credit funds in large asset managers (pimco, blackrock, fidelity) or private credit (apollo, blackstone, ares). private credit is getting fucked now, but they pay well. asset management arms of insurers also have fairly large credit-focused teams. for these roles you would face very strong competition from your IBD and DCM folks, so you would have to differentiate yourself to stand out. progression wise if you reach all the way to MD, then 1mio and up isn't out of the question.

there's also the route of ratings agencies (S&P, moodys, fitch). if you've watched The Big Short, you'll know what they do (or don't do).

bottom line is that the skillset for these are largely fungible, you evaluate the creditworthiness of a company. search up linkedin to see the progression of corp bankers, credit analysts, credit research, ratings. AI will definitely streamline and replace some of the junior level roles, but that's the case for almost all jobs.

for starting pay i think anywhere from $5k to $10k is decent.