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// ← EVERY SEATTHE CREDIT LINE

First floor · The lending desk

Portfolio Manager (Credit)

Owns the credit on a book after the money is out — reviews, covenants, ratings and early warning.

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// 01 — WHAT A PORTFOLIO MANAGER DOES

Where the relationship manager owns the client, this seat owns the file: the annual review, the covenant test, the risk rating and the paper the committee reads. It is the seat that notices a book drifting before anyone in the front line wants to hear it.

// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE

From credit analysis, from a lending seat, or as a deliberate move by relationship managers who prefer the judgment half of the craft; the title means different things at different banks, which the site has a page about.

// 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. 01What would you look at first on a book you have just inherited?
  2. 02A covenant is breached on a client who is trading fine. What do you do?
  3. 03How do you rank forty files by where the risk actually is?
  4. 04The RM says the numbers are late because the accountant is busy. Your response?
  5. 05When would you downgrade, and who will be unhappy?
  6. 06What does early warning actually look like in practice?

What the panel is listening for. Whether you can be independent of the relationship without being indifferent to it — the seat fails in both directions.

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

Portfolio work is credit judgment applied to a whole book rather than one file, and it is where the frameworks the site teaches earn their keep at scale.

The seat sees the drift a file shows between one review and the next, long before a covenant breaks. Below: a day in the seat, what the first year tests, and the three issues that practise it.

START HERE · Issue 09 — the Tuesday list

// 05 — A DAY IN THE SEAT

  1. 08:30The weekly review: the watchlist, the late reports, the covenant tests falling due.
  2. 09:30An annual review — last year's paper beside this year's accounts, and the question of what changed.
  3. 11:00A covenant certificate that passes by a margin too thin to ignore.
  4. 13:30The risk rating on a file the relationship manager thinks is fine.
  5. 15:00A call to a finance director whose monthly accounts are late for the second time.
  6. 16:30A waiver paper: what the bank gives, and what it asks for in return.

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 you notice drift before a covenant does.
  • Whether your ratings move when the evidence does — up as well as down.
  • Whether you can hold a view against the relationship manager without damaging the relationship.
  • Whether your reviews read what changed since last year, rather than the business from scratch.
  • Whether you spend your time on the files that are moving, not the ones that are merely weak.

// 07 — WHAT YOU SEE FROM HERE

What happens after approval — most of a loan's life, and the part the origination seats never see. From here the bank looks like a set of promises being kept or quietly broken, and the shape of the book — which sectors, which structures, which relationship managers — becomes visible in a way no single file shows.

// 08 — THE FILES TO PRACTISE ON

// 09 — WHERE THE SEAT LEADS

Into sanctioning, where the same judgment signs rather than reviews; into credit risk, where the book view becomes policy; or into workout, where the files that drift end up. It is also the seat many relationship managers pass through when they want the judgment half of the craft on its own.

// 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.

SIGNAL OR NOISE · CHAPTER 6

A garden centre's sales dip every winter and peak every spring. This spring's peak was 15% lower than any of the last six. The year is still on budget, because winter was strong.

Signal or noise?

1 FILES · PICK A CALL ON ANY OF THEM

5 MORE ON CHAPTER 6 · THE THREE MODES OF WATCHING →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.