Microfinance

The third entry is o agente de crédito, and the settled English for it is « a loan officer », a noun that misleads almost everybody who meets it outside an office. In ordinary English « an officer » wears something: the army commissions them, a ship has them on the bridge, and « a police officer » is how a stranger is addressed in the street. Commercial and charitable bodies took the same word and emptied it of rank entirely. « A loan officer » is the person at the desk who takes the application and recommends it, « a compliance officer » checks the rules, « a chief executive officer » runs the whole company. Not one of them outranks anybody by virtue of the word, and the three sit at very different heights. The trap runs the other way too, because « an official » is not a variant of it: that noun names somebody acting for a government or a governing body, so « a bank official » sounds like an inspector rather than an employee. « Officer » names the post, « official » names the authority behind it.