Career path - Direct Lending

Hi,

I’ve been reading WSO since I was in college and now I’m 4 years into my career and would like to bounce some ideas off of the community around career path, and get any perspective I can from those of you that work on the credit side of things. To give some background: I work in the specialized secured lending group of a large bank. We provide revolvers and term loans backed by AR, Inventory, and sometimes machinery and equipment. Proceeds are used to fund LBOs (usually in conjunction with sub debt), business expansion, or to support general working capital. Size of the loans we give are anywhere from $20M to $1B and we hold exposure on our balance sheet for the life of the loan.

I’m trying to figure out the next step in my career. Working on the credit side (not IB) and giving 2% paper limits the upside on comp, and working for a bank limits the type of transactions I work on given the conservative risk appetite. I was thinking my next move would be to do something similar (direct lending) for a non-bank. Can anyone shed light the differences between what I’m currently doing and what non-bank direct lenders do, and confirm if the comp is much better going that route? Lastly, what other routes have folks gone from my background that I might not have considered yet?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read through this and provide your thoughts.