How to Apply to Intermediate Capital Group

Key Takeaways

ICG is a FTSE 100 alternative asset manager with over $100 billion in AUM, headquartered in London and operating across four strategies: Structured and Private Equity, Private Debt, Real Assets, and Credit.
The careers portal runs on Workday at icg.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/external_careers and is the only authoritative source for live roles.
Interview processes run five to six rounds over three to eight weeks for most investment seats, with a credit or investment case exercise as the central technical gate.
The firm is unmistakably London-centric and investment-led. Corporate functions are respected but the centre of gravity is with the deal teams.
Product depth matters more than generalist polish. Your CV and cover letter should name the specific strategy and product you are targeting.
Workday parsing rewards simple, single-column, text-based PDFs and penalises graphics-heavy templates.
For regulated roles, references, disclosures, and prior approvals are checked carefully. Intellectual honesty and regulatory cleanliness are non-negotiable.
Referrals from current or former employees materially shorten the process, but the firm's bar applies equally to referred and cold candidates.

About Intermediate Capital Group

Intermediate Capital Group plc (ICG) is one of the largest alternative asset managers in the world, with more than $100 billion of assets under management across private and liquid credit, private equity secondaries, infrastructure equity, and real estate. Founded in London in 1989 as a pioneer of European mezzanine finance, the firm is listed on the London Stock Exchange (ticker: ICG) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100. Headquartered at Juxon House, 100 St Paul's Churchyard in the City of London, ICG employs roughly 750 people across offices in Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific, and generates revenue of approximately £1 billion per year. Chief Executive Benoit Durteste, who has led the firm since 2017, has overseen its transformation from a specialist mezzanine house into a genuinely diversified alternatives manager where third-party fee-earning AUM now dwarfs the balance sheet. The business is organised into four strategic marketing pillars. Structured and Private Equity covers the flagship Strategic Equity franchise (GP-led secondaries and continuation vehicles) along with Europe Mid-Market private equity and LP Secondaries. Private Debt is anchored by Senior Debt Partners, the European direct lending flagship that is now one of the largest middle-market private credit platforms in Europe, alongside North American Private Debt. Real Assets combines Infrastructure Equity (with a growing transition-and-energy thematic) and Real Estate equity and debt. Credit covers CLO management, liquid credit, and structured credit solutions. Around this sits a growing wealth channel and a retail semi-liquid product suite aimed at the evergreen LP of the future. For candidates, the practical takeaway is that ICG is not a single-strategy boutique anymore and not a generalist mega-fund either. It sits in the narrow but lucrative band of specialist alternatives managers that are large enough to pay well, institutional enough to offer real training, and focused enough that individual professionals still materially affect fund performance. Recent years have been a strong tailwind story for the business. The private credit boom has driven record fundraising into Senior Debt Partners and the North American Private Debt platform. Strategic Equity has become one of the most recognised brands in the GP-led secondaries market following a series of multi-billion-dollar fund closes. The firm has also invested heavily in its Asia-Pacific footprint, including expanded offices in Tokyo and Sydney, and has grown its New York presence to support North American credit, infrastructure, and secondaries activity. None of this changes the fundamental culture, which remains unmistakably London-centric, investment-led, and conservative by the standards of the alternatives industry. ICG is not a place where marketing or product wags the investment tail, and candidates who are used to platform-first fund houses sometimes underestimate how much weight the firm places on deal-level thinking. If you are targeting an investment seat at ICG, you are effectively targeting one of the leading training grounds in European private credit and secondaries. If you are targeting an infrastructure, legal, finance, operations, risk, compliance, or technology seat, you are joining a mid-sized but rapidly professionalising platform where your work is visible to partners and where the bar for hiring has been raised considerably as the firm has grown.

Application Process

1
Start at the public careers hub at icgam
Start at the public careers hub at icgam.com/people-and-careers/careers, which links through to ICG's Workday instance at icg.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/external_careers. The external_careers site is the single source of truth for live roles; any requisition you do not see there is not live, regardless of what a recruiter tells you.
2
Filter by location (London is dominant; New York, Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Stoc
Filter by location (London is dominant; New York, Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Stockholm, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney appear for specific desks) and by job family. Investment roles are typically listed under titles like Analyst, Associate, Vice President, Principal, and Managing Director, with the strategy (Senior Debt Partners, Strategic Equity, North American Private Debt, Infrastructure, Real Estate, Credit) appearing either in the title or in the first paragraph of the description. Corporate functions are listed under names like Risk, Finance, Compliance, Legal, Operations, Technology, Fund Finance, Investor Relations, and Marketing.
3
Create a Workday candidate account
Create a Workday candidate account. ICG's Workday tenant follows the standard configuration, so the account you create will let you track every application to the firm and will retain your CV, cover letter, and answers to standard diligence questions (work authorisation, notice period, regulated-role declarations, source of contact). Use a personal email, not a current-employer email, and choose a password you can keep for years – reusing the account for future applications is part of the long game at a firm this size.
4
Upload a single-page CV (for analyst and associate levels) or a two-page CV (for
Upload a single-page CV (for analyst and associate levels) or a two-page CV (for VP and above) as a PDF. Workday's resume parser at ICG is configured to auto-populate work history, education, and skills, and it will misread multi-column designs and graphics-heavy templates. Keep the layout single-column, use standard section headings (Professional Experience, Education, Qualifications, Languages, Other), and make sure every role has a clean company name, title, location, and dated start/end.
5
Write a targeted cover letter or 'Why ICG' paragraph in the Workday text box
Write a targeted cover letter or 'Why ICG' paragraph in the Workday text box. This is not optional in practice – candidates who skip it are disproportionately screened out at the first human pass. Name the specific strategy you are applying to (for example 'Senior Debt Partners' not 'private credit'), reference one deal or fund vintage that the team is known for, and state plainly what you would contribute in the first twelve months.
6
Complete the eligibility and screening questions honestly
Complete the eligibility and screening questions honestly. ICG is a UK-regulated firm, and several of its roles sit within the FCA's Senior Managers and Certification Regime. Misstatements on work authorisation, criminal record disclosures, regulatory references, or conflicts of interest are terminal in finance hiring and will follow you across every other firm in the City.
7
Submit and monitor your Workday dashboard
Submit and monitor your Workday dashboard. Realistic timelines are around one to two weeks to first human contact for investment roles, three to six weeks end-to-end for a focused process, and eight to twelve weeks for senior hires that require partner alignment across multiple offices. Referrals from current employees, alumni of the firm, or senior market contacts materially compress the timeline, because they move your CV from the general pool into an actively sponsored pile.
8
For graduate, off-cycle, and summer internship routes, watch the Early Careers s
For graduate, off-cycle, and summer internship routes, watch the Early Careers section. ICG's graduate programme is small (typically single-digit hires per cohort across London) and runs on a defined autumn timetable with online tests, video interviews, and a final-round assessment centre. Off-cycle internships are often added mid-year when individual desks need temporary bandwidth and tend to be filled in weeks, so check Workday regularly if you are a penultimate-year student or recent graduate.

Resume Tips for Intermediate Capital Group

recommended

Lead with transactions, funds, and dollars

Lead with transactions, funds, and dollars. For investment roles, recruiters and MDs at ICG want to see the deals you have actually worked on – deal size, sector, capital structure, your role on the team, and the outcome. A line that reads 'Associate on £250m unitranche financing of UK mid-market software business; led model build, lender-side diligence coordination, and credit paper to investment committee' is worth more than ten lines of generic bullet points about 'financial modelling'.

recommended

Be explicit about the product, not just the asset class

Be explicit about the product, not just the asset class. Private credit, direct lending, unitranche, second lien, mezzanine, PIK, HoldCo PIK, preferred equity, GP-led secondaries, LP secondaries, continuation vehicles, CLO equity and mezz, infrastructure equity, infrastructure debt, value-add real estate, and senior secured real estate are all distinct products. ICG hires on product depth. Your CV should make clear which of these you have touched and at what level of ownership.

recommended

Quantify ruthlessly

Quantify ruthlessly. Fund sizes, deal sizes, IRRs, multiples, loss rates, ticket sizes, number of deals per year, and portfolio AUM under your coverage are all legitimate numbers for a finance CV. Vague phrases like 'supported senior team on transactions' or 'contributed to fundraising' signal junior hands and will get your CV downgraded.

recommended

Name-drop sparingly but precisely

Name-drop sparingly but precisely. If you worked on a well-known deal at a sponsor, an investment bank, or a rating agency, say so. Confidentiality is real but the market knows which deals are which. The alternative – blanking out every counterparty – reads as either paranoia or padding.

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For non-investment roles, anchor every bullet to business impact

For non-investment roles, anchor every bullet to business impact. A risk analyst CV that says 'built risk-weighted asset model covering £4bn direct lending book, identified concentration breach leading to revised limits' outperforms one that says 'worked on risk models'. A fund finance CV should quantify NAV, capital calls processed, and number of funds supported. A technology CV should list systems (Allvue, eFront, Dynamo, Salesforce, Snowflake, Databricks, Python, Tableau) and the scale of the data being moved.

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Keep the Education and Qualifications section honest and specific

Keep the Education and Qualifications section honest and specific. For UK-origin candidates, ICG expects a strong degree from a recognised university and, for investment seats, typically a 2:1 or first-class honours. Relevant qualifications – CFA charter or progress through the levels, ACA / ACCA / CIMA, CAIA, or a specialist Masters – should be listed with the exact status (Level 2 passed June 2024, ACA in progress with sponsorship from employer, CFA Charterholder).

recommended

Use British English spelling and date formats if you are applying to London (org

Use British English spelling and date formats if you are applying to London (organise, realised, favour, DD/MM/YYYY). It is a small signal, but ICG is an old City institution and drafting standards are noticed. For New York roles, use American English consistently.

recommended

Cut the interests section to two lines or delete it

Cut the interests section to two lines or delete it. No one hiring at a $100 billion alternatives manager needs to know that you 'enjoy travelling and socialising with friends'. If you have a genuine, distinctive interest – a serious sport, a competitive pursuit, a volunteer role with measurable impact – a single specific line can be a human hook in an interview. Anything else is filler.

recommended

Run the whole document through a plain-text preview before you upload it

Run the whole document through a plain-text preview before you upload it. Open the PDF in a text browser or paste it into a text editor and confirm that Workday will see clean, linear text. Graphics, text boxes, headers and footers, and icons routinely break the parser and cause fields to populate as blank or junk.

ATS System: Workday

ICG operates its external careers portal on Workday at icg.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/external_careers. Workday is the dominant enterprise ATS across UK-listed financial services and is the system ICG uses for every external hire, from graduates to Managing Directors. Your CV is parsed by Workday at upload, the resulting structured profile is stored against your candidate account, and the firm's recruiters work inside a separate Workday Recruiting view that aggregates your application, screening answers, interview feedback, and assessment scores. Internal mobility inside ICG also runs through the same Workday backbone.

Upload a single-column, text-based PDF. Multi-column CVs, CVs built in Canva or InDesign with heavy graphics, and CVs that place contact details inside headers or footers consistently parse badly. If Workday cannot read your name, email, and most recent employer, the human recruiter sees a broken record and moves on.
Mirror the job description language. Workday's candidate ranking uses keyword alignment as one input. If the role says 'direct lending' and 'European middle market', your CV and cover letter should contain those exact phrases where they are true. Do not stuff keywords – recruiters read the CV after the filter – but do remove synonyms that could make you invisible to search.
Fill in every Workday field, even if it seems redundant with your CV. Leaving the structured 'Most Recent Employer' or 'Highest Education' fields blank makes your profile harder to find in Workday's internal search and makes you look careless.
Use the same name and email across applications. Workday deduplicates candidates by email, so switching between personal and work addresses across applications can fragment your history and confuse recruiters about how long you have been in the pipeline.
Answer the legal and regulatory questions carefully. UK right-to-work, visa sponsorship requirements, previous regulatory approvals, notice periods, and non-compete situations are all captured in Workday and are checked against employment references later. Inconsistencies are caught and are very hard to recover from.
If you are reapplying after a previous rejection, update your CV meaningfully. Workday records every application against your account, and ICG's recruiters can see when the same CV has been submitted twice. A genuinely improved application – new qualification, new deal experience, stronger cover letter – is welcomed. An identical resubmission is not.

Interview Culture

ICG runs a standard London-finance interview process with a boutique-culture final round.

Expect five to six stages in total, running over three to eight weeks for most investment roles. The first stage is typically a thirty-minute recruiter screen, either with the internal Talent Acquisition team or, for senior hires, with a retained external search firm. This call covers motivation, salary expectations, notice period, and a rough fit check on the role. The second stage is a first-round interview with an Associate or Vice President from the relevant desk, focused on your CV, one or two recent deals, and your understanding of the strategy you are applying to. For Senior Debt Partners and North American Private Debt, expect questions on covenant packages, unitranche structures, EBITDA adjustments, and how you think about downside scenarios. For Strategic Equity, expect questions on continuation vehicles, GP economics, and why a particular LP would or would not tender. For Real Assets and Infrastructure, expect questions on regulatory frameworks, contracted cash flows, and risk allocation. The third stage is almost always a modelling or case exercise. For credit roles, this is typically a credit paper or cashflow-based LBO-style model on a real or disguised company, with a write-up and a discussion of key risks, mitigants, and recommended structure. For private equity secondaries, expect a portfolio valuation exercise and a qualitative assessment of a hypothetical GP. For infrastructure and real estate, expect a project-finance style model and a memo. Case exercises are deliberately time-boxed (often a weekend, sometimes a single day) and are graded as much on clarity of thinking and written communication as on raw numerical accuracy. The fourth stage is a panel with two or three Vice Presidents and Principals, designed to test depth and to cross-check the signals from the first rounds. Expect behavioural questions (tell me about a time you disagreed with a senior colleague; tell me about a deal that went wrong; tell me about a situation where you pushed back on a client), followed by a deeper technical discussion that builds on the case. The final stage is with a Managing Director or Head of Strategy, and for truly senior or sensitive seats, with a member of the Executive Committee. This round is primarily a cultural and judgement assessment. ICG partners care about whether you can be trusted in front of a GP, an LP, a sponsor, or a management team, and whether you will raise your hand when something looks wrong. A polished but silent candidate does poorly here. A candidate who disagrees thoughtfully with the partner and is willing to show their reasoning under pressure tends to do well. Culturally, ICG sits on the conservative end of the London alternatives spectrum. The tone is professional rather than aggressive, the dress code is still closer to suits than sneakers for external-facing roles, and the firm takes pride in having a lower turnover rate than the leveraged-finance desks of the bulge bracket banks. It is not a sweatshop culture – hours on transaction teams are heavy but not unsustainable – and the firm has made real investments in maternity, paternity, and flexible-working policies over the last five years. That said, the bar is high, partners are present in the office most days, and visibility matters. Hybrid working is typically three to four days in the office per week for London-based investment teams, with corporate functions often slightly more flexible.

What Intermediate Capital Group Looks For

Deal-level judgement. Across every strategy, ICG hires for the ability to look at a situation – a borrower, a GP portfolio, an infrastructure concession, a CLO tranche – and form a defensible view on risk, return, and structure. Technical skills are a floor, not a ceiling.
Clear writing. Credit papers, investment memos, and LP reports are the currency of the firm. Candidates who cannot express a thesis in two paragraphs of plain English struggle, however strong their modelling.
Intellectual honesty. ICG partners have long memories and sit on deals for years. A candidate who overstates their contribution, hides a weakness, or walks back a view under pressure is remembered.
Relevant product experience. The firm strongly prefers candidates with direct experience in the specific product (unitranche, GP-led secondaries, infrastructure equity, CLO structuring) over generalists who claim they can 'pick it up'. Adjacent experience counts, but you will be asked to justify the transition.
Cultural fit with a London institution. ICG is not a startup, not a hedge fund, and not a bulge-bracket bank. Candidates who thrive are typically those who respect institutional process, can work calmly with senior people, and who want to build a twenty-year career rather than a two-year resume line.
Regulatory cleanliness. For all investment and control-function roles, ICG checks regulatory references, FCA approvals, and prior disclosures. Candidates with clean records and thoughtful answers to any historical issues are strongly preferred.
Language and geographic fit. For the European desks, working French, German, Spanish, Italian, or Nordic language skills are a real differentiator. For Asia-Pacific, Japanese and Mandarin carry weight. For New York, American capital-markets experience is a near-requirement for senior credit and secondaries seats.
For corporate functions (Risk, Finance, Compliance, Legal, Operations, Technology), genuine interest in alternative assets. Candidates who treat these functions as a stepping stone away from traditional banking, rather than as a long-term home inside alternatives, are screened out. ICG invests heavily in its non-investment teams and expects commitment in return.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ATS does Intermediate Capital Group use?

ICG uses Workday for all external hiring. The careers site lives at icg.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/external_careers, linked from icgam.com/people-and-careers/careers. This is the single source of truth for live roles across London, New York, Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Stockholm, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney.

Where is ICG headquartered and how big is it?

ICG is headquartered at Juxon House, 100 St Paul's Churchyard in the City of London. It employs roughly 750 people across its global offices, generates revenue of approximately £1 billion per year, and manages more than $100 billion in assets. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange as a member of the FTSE 100 under the ticker ICG.

Who leads ICG?

Benoit Durteste is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of ICG. He joined the firm in 2002 and has led it since 2017, having previously run the European mezzanine business. The firm is governed by a Board of Directors and run day-to-day by an Executive Committee that brings together the leaders of each investment strategy and corporate function.

What strategies does ICG hire for?

ICG hires across four marketing pillars. Structured and Private Equity includes the flagship Strategic Equity (GP-led secondaries and continuation vehicles), Europe Mid-Market private equity, and LP Secondaries. Private Debt includes Senior Debt Partners (European direct lending) and North American Private Debt. Real Assets includes Infrastructure Equity and Real Estate. Credit covers CLOs, liquid credit, and structured credit. Investment hiring ranges from Analyst through Managing Director, and the firm also runs a growing graduate programme, internship programme, and corporate functions hiring in Risk, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Operations, Technology, Investor Relations, and Marketing.

How long does the ICG interview process take?

Most investment processes take three to eight weeks and involve five to six rounds: a recruiter screen, a first-round interview with an Associate or VP, a case or modelling exercise, a panel with Vice Presidents and Principals, and a final round with a Managing Director or Executive Committee member. Senior hires that require partner alignment across offices can run eight to twelve weeks. Early-careers hiring follows a more structured autumn timetable with online tests and an assessment centre.

Does ICG sponsor visas?

ICG does sponsor UK Skilled Worker visas for investment and specialist corporate seats where the role cannot be filled locally, and supports visas in the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia where required. Sponsorship is confirmed at offer stage rather than at CV screen. You will be asked about your right to work in the Workday application. Answer accurately; the question is used to route your CV rather than to reject it outright.

What salaries and bonuses does ICG pay?

ICG does not publish salary bands, but the firm benchmarks against other leading European alternatives managers. Investment seats combine base salary, annual bonus, and carry participation on the funds you support, with carry becoming a meaningful share of total compensation at the Principal level and above. Corporate-function pay is competitive with other FTSE 100 financial services employers. Formal offer details are discussed at the final-round stage.

How should I prepare for the ICG case exercise?

For credit roles, practise building a clean, auditable cashflow and debt schedule on a real or sanitised target, and be ready to write a one-to-two-page investment committee paper covering business summary, key risks, structure, and recommended terms. For secondaries, prepare a portfolio NAV assessment and a qualitative GP review. For infrastructure and real estate, prepare a project-finance or discounted-cashflow model and a short memo. In every case, prioritise clarity and correctness over speed. Clearly labelled assumptions, a one-line thesis at the top of your memo, and a transparent downside case are worth more than elaborate modelling tricks.

Does ICG value CFA, ACA, or other qualifications?

Yes, but only as a complement to real deal or operational experience. CFA charterholders are common in credit and secondaries, ACA- and ACCA-qualified accountants are common in Finance, Fund Finance, and Valuations, and CAIA is well-regarded for distribution and investor-relations seats. Progress through these qualifications should be listed accurately on your CV. No qualification compensates for thin deal experience on an investment CV.

Is ICG hiring remote workers?

ICG operates a hybrid model rather than a remote model. London-based investment teams typically work three to four days per week in the Juxon House office, with more flexibility for certain corporate functions. Fully remote roles are rare and tend to be highly specialist technology or operational seats. Expect to be asked about your ability to be in-office during the interview process.

How competitive is the ICG graduate programme?

ICG's graduate programme is small – typically single-digit hires per year across London – and highly competitive. It targets penultimate-year and final-year students from leading UK and European universities and runs on a structured autumn timetable with online tests, a video interview, and a final assessment centre. Conversion rates from assessment centre to offer are well below the global banking average. Off-cycle internships are added mid-year when individual desks need capacity and are worth monitoring on Workday.

What do ICG recruiters look for in a cover letter?

Three things: specificity, motivation, and judgement. Name the exact strategy (Senior Debt Partners, not 'private credit'), explain in one sentence why that strategy fits your career trajectory, and give one concrete example of work you have done that will transfer. A cover letter that could have been sent to any private credit manager is almost as bad as no cover letter.

Open Positions

Intermediate Capital Group currently has 3 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 3 open positions at Intermediate Capital Group

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Sources

ICG - Careers —
ICG External Careers - Workday —
ICG - About Us —
ICG - Our Strategies —
ICG - Annual Report and Accounts —
London Stock Exchange - ICG share information —
FCA Financial Services Register - Intermediate Capital Group —