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// ← EVERY SEATTHE CREDIT LINE

First floor · The lending desk

Credit Sanctioner

Holds delegated authority and signs — or declines — the lending the front line brings.

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// 01 — WHAT A CREDIT SANCTIONER DOES

The work is other people's papers, read fast and answered with a decision, a condition or a question that sends the file back. The authority is personal and limited, so the seat is a constant judgment about what belongs to you and what belongs upstairs, and the relationship with the front line is designed to have friction in it.

// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE

From analysis and portfolio seats after several years; it is a promotion within the credit line rather than an entry point.

// 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. 01Talk me through a decision you made that you would make differently now.
  2. 02How do you decline something without losing the banker who brought it?
  3. 03What would you change about this paper before you would sign it?
  4. 04Where does your authority stop, and how do you know?
  5. 05You are not comfortable but you cannot say why. What then?
  6. 06How do you keep your standard the same in a good year and a bad one?

What the panel is listening for. Whether your standard is stable — the same answer to the same file in a growth year and a downturn — and whether you can say no in a way that keeps the file coming back.

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 →

// 04 — WHY CREDIT PAYS IN THIS SEAT

This is the seat where credit judgment stops being an opinion and becomes a decision with your name on it, which is why the site's whole method is built around making the call before seeing the answer.

Signing well is learned by reading many papers and noticing which facts the good ones rest on. Below: a day in the seat, what the first year tests, and the three files that test a sanctioner's standard.

START HERE · What an approver should find in a paper

// 05 — A DAY IN THE SEAT

  1. 08:30The queue: overnight papers, sorted by what is urgent and what only says it is.
  2. 09:30A paper read fast, the fact it rests on found — and checked against the file.
  3. 11:00A conditional approval: the one condition that answers the risk the paper named.
  4. 13:30A relationship manager who needs the answer today.
  5. 15:00A paper above your authority, and the note that goes up with it.
  6. 16:30A decline written so the banker understands it — and brings the next file anyway.

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 your answer is the same on the same file in a good week and a bad one.
  • Whether you decide quickly when the file allows it — a clean yes is part of the job.
  • Whether each of your conditions answers a named risk.
  • Whether you know where your authority stops.
  • Whether the front line keeps bringing you files after you have declined some.

// 07 — WHAT YOU SEE FROM HERE

The front line's incentives and the bank's appetite meeting on one desk, many times a day. The seat sees every relationship manager's standard — whose papers can be signed as written and whose need reading twice — and it is where the bank's policy either holds or is quietly renegotiated.

// 08 — THE FILES TO PRACTISE ON

// 09 — WHERE THE SEAT LEADS

Higher authority, then credit committee and the head-of-credit seat — the positions that set the standard others sign to. Some move into risk leadership. The path upward is almost always a record of decisions that held up years later.

// 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.

THE CALL · CHAPTER 7

During negotiation a borrower's owner twice reopens agreed terms at the last minute and goes over your head to your manager. The credit itself is strong.

Your move?

1 FILES · PICK A CALL ON ANY OF THEM

5 MORE ON CHAPTER 7 · THE WALK-AWAY FRAMEWORK →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 CREDIT LINE

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