Skip to content
// ← EVERY SEATTHE FRONT LINE

Ground floor · The hall

Business Relationship Manager

Carries a book of trading businesses — wins them, keeps them, and is the bank's voice when the answer is no.

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// 01 — WHAT A BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP MANAGER DOES

The book is the job: a portfolio of owner-managed and mid-market companies whose facilities you renew, whose growth you fund, and whose bad news you have to hear early. Half the week is in front of owners and accountants, the other half is credit — the paper, the annual review, the argument with the assessor.

// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE

Usually from an analyst or associate seat, from a branch after several years, or laterally from accounting practice with the client relationships already in hand.

// 03 — WHAT THE INTERVIEW ASKS

These are the shapes the round takes, not a question bank — banks phrase them differently and the wording is never the point.

  1. 01How would you grow a book from a standing start?
  2. 02Here is a borrower. What do you make of it, and what would you do?
  3. 03Credit has declined your client's request. What do you do next?
  4. 04Tell me about a deal you lost, and why.
  5. 05How do you decide which of forty clients gets your Tuesday?
  6. 06A client's numbers arrive three months late. What does that tell you?

What the panel is listening for. Two capacities, and most candidates prepare only for one: that you can sell, and that you can read a business well enough that the bank can trust you with its name in a room alone.

Practise the round in the credit and lending quiz: five questions these panels ask, with the senior interviewer's read on every answer.

Take the quiz →

The full question set for this seat, with what the panel listens for under each, is on Relationship Manager Interview Questions.

// 04 — WHY CREDIT PAYS IN THIS SEAT

This is a credit seat wearing a commercial title — an RM who cannot read a file is a salesperson the bank cannot afford, and the site's own interview page for the seat says so at length.

Every declined request, every covenant conversation, every paper argued with the assessor is a credit read done in front of a client — which is why the interview tests the credit half harder than candidates expect, and the job harder still.

START HERE · Issue 08 — the new-to-bank developer

// 05 — A DAY IN THE SEAT

  1. 08:00Overnight on the book: a payment that bounced, a limit close to full, an accountant asking for a call.
  2. 09:30A site visit. The factory floor says more than the accounts about whether the growth is real.
  3. 11:30The credit paper for that visit's request, written so the approver can decide without calling you.
  4. 13:30The call nobody wants: credit has come back with conditions the client will not like.
  5. 15:00New business — a referral from an accountant, and a competitor's term sheet already on the owner's desk.
  6. 17:00The pipeline review: which deals will close this quarter, and which should not.

The shape of a day, not a rota — banks and books differ. A relationship manager's day is on what a commercial banker does.

// 06 — WHAT THE FIRST YEAR TESTS

  • Whether clients ring you early with bad news — the first sign they trust you.
  • Whether your papers get through credit without being rewritten.
  • Whether you can win business without promising what credit will not approve.
  • Whether you can deliver a no, or a conditional yes, and keep the client.
  • Whether you can name the three weakest files in your book without looking.

// 07 — WHAT YOU SEE FROM HERE

The bank from the client's side of the table: what it costs a business to deal with the bank, how long a decision takes, and how a condition reads to the person who has to live with it. It is also the seat that sees the market first — which competitor is pricing to win, which sector is starting to struggle.

// 08 — THE FILES TO PRACTISE ON

// 09 — WHERE THE SEAT LEADS

Into larger books and larger clients — corporate coverage, a specialist sector — or across the table into credit, as a sanctioner who knows what the front line is carrying. Some go on to lead teams; the ones who do it well are usually the ones whose papers never needed rewriting.

// 10 — READ BEFORE THE ROUND

THE IN-TRAY · ONE MINUTE

Make the call on one file.

A short file on the ground this page covers. Every option opens with how far it sits from a senior banker’s read.

WHAT THEY HEAR · CHAPTER 8

The bank asks a farmer for quarterly accounts. She replies: 'My year has one harvest. Quarterly numbers will make me look broke three times a year.'

What is she telling you?

1 FILES · PICK A CALL ON ANY OF THEM

5 MORE ON CHAPTER 8 · THE THREE TRANSLATIONS →WHERE DO YOU READ FROM? THE PLACEMENT →

// THE FREE CASE

FREE · NO PURCHASERead one complete case first Case 01 of the interview case pack — Northmark Engineering, the file, the diagnostic and the ninety-second walkthrough — in full, for an email address.10-PAGE PDF · FREE

// ALSO IN THE FRONT LINE

The whole board, and how the four blocks fit together, is on what jobs banks hire for.