Leasing, lease financing and factoring almost never appear in business school presentations, yet they employ tens of thousands of people and regularly hire juniors. These specialised financing jobs serve companies that want to finance equipment, a building or their cash flow. Here is what to know to consider them seriously.
The sector and its players
Three activities to tell apart
- Leasing (crédit-bail): a company finances equipment (machine, vehicle, IT hardware) or a building, and the client rents it, often with a purchase option at the end of the contract.
- Factoring (affacturage): a company sells its customer invoices to a factoring company that collects them, guarantees payment and advances the corresponding cash.
- Neighbouring activities: equipment lease financing, financial guarantees, consumer credit, securitisation.
Who are the players?
The Association française des Sociétés Financières (ASF) represents these businesses. Its official website 🔗 presents its members' scope: factoring, property leasing, equipment lease financing for companies, financial guarantees, consumer credit, securitisation. It also states that the sector's collective agreement covers about 250 companies and 25,000 employees. The players include subsidiaries of large banking groups, independents and companies attached to manufacturers.
⚠️ Keep in mind: these companies are regulated financial institutions. Risk and compliance functions weigh as much as sales functions.
Jobs that hire
- Account manager / sales: prospects and supports companies, dealers or referral partners, and structures the financing offer.
- Credit / risk analyst: studies the creditworthiness of the client or debtors, proposes an amount and conditions. Our credit analyst resume guide details expectations.
- Contract administrator: follows files, rent payments, due dates and client relations.
- Collections: handles late payments and disputes. See also our credit manager and collections resume guide.
- Legal and tax: particularly present in property leasing, where mastering the tax, legal and accounting aspects of a file takes precise know-how, as L'Étudiant 🔗 points out in its article on specialised financing careers.
- Support functions: accounting, management control, compliance, IT.
Profiles and training sought
These companies hire varied profiles:
- Business schools and universities (finance, banking, management) for sales, analysis and administration roles;
- Law and tax degrees for structuring, contracts and guarantees;
- Vocational diplomas and bachelor-level programmes in banking, insurance or management for administrator roles;
- Apprentices and interns, very present in this sector: work-study is an excellent way in, see our guide to the work-study calendar in finance.
Qualities expected: rigour, a head for numbers, a taste for dealing with business owners, the ability to read a balance sheet and a contract. English is a plus in international groups.
Pay and career paths
Pay generally follows that of corporate and retail banking, with a variable part for sales roles. It varies with company size, location and specialty; for general benchmarks, see our finance salaries guide.
On career progression:
- an analyst can become a portfolio manager and then head of risk;
- an account manager can move up to regional or market sales management;
- bridges to banking (corporate financing, risk) or to corporate finance departments are common.
💡 Learn more: mapping the sector's employers and your school's contacts goes through your professional network.
How to apply and stand out
- Target the sector's employers: browse the member list on the ASF site, then each company's careers page.
- Understand the product before the interview. Being able to explain simply the difference between leasing and a standard loan, or how factoring works, sets you apart from most candidates.
- Show interest in SMEs and mid-caps. These companies mostly finance mid-sized businesses: talk about what you learned in an internship or project related to them.
- Prepare simple cases. You may be asked to assess a financing file from a balance sheet: practise reading accounts.
- Highlight versatility. Mid-sized structures often ask you to touch several topics.
Tailoring your resume to this sector
A resume for specialised financing should talk about numbers, risk and client relations:
- put at the top the training and internships touching banking, insurance, law or management;
- quantify your achievements: volume of files handled, turnaround times, portfolio followed;
- name the tools: advanced Excel, scoring tools, contract management or accounting software;
- state your languages and mobility, since these companies are established throughout France.
Our guide to writing a finance resume gives the basic structure; the one on results-oriented bullet points helps you write up your experience.
To apply to several companies in the sector, it is better to adjust the resume to each offer than to send a single document. FinanceCV handles the layout for you and produces a clear file that works with the applicant tracking systems (ATS) many employers use: you focus on the content.
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