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// ← EVERY SEATTHE FRONT LINE

Ground floor · The hall

Private Banker

Looks after wealthy individuals and families — their banking, their borrowing, and their access to the bank's investment and advisory services.

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// 01 — WHAT A PRIVATE BANKER DOES

The clients are often business owners, so the conversation moves between a personal balance sheet and a company's, and lending against shares, property or a business interest is a routine part of it. Discretion, availability and continuity matter more than product knowledge, which is what makes the seat slow to build and expensive to lose.

// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE

From commercial or corporate banking, from wealth advice, or from an associate seat inside the private bank; regulated advice work usually needs its own qualification.

// 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 win the trust of someone who does not need you?
  2. 02A client asks for something that is legal and not in their interest. What do you do?
  3. 03How do you lend against an asset that is not easy to sell?
  4. 04Where does a business owner's balance sheet stop and their company's begin?
  5. 05Tell me about a relationship you kept through something difficult.
  6. 06What would you not talk about at a client dinner?

What the panel is listening for. Judgment about people and discretion under pressure — this is one of the few seats where the panel is openly assessing whether they would put you in front of their most valuable clients.

Practise the round in the front-line quiz: one of its five questions is this seat's own, and every answer has the senior interviewer's read.

Take the quiz →

// 04 — WHY CREDIT PAYS IN THIS SEAT

Lending against illiquid assets to people whose wealth is tied up in one business is a credit problem before it is a wealth one, and the second question the committee asks is always what happens if the business stops.

The client is a person, but the loan is usually secured on a business or a property that person controls, and the credit paper has to say what happens to both if one fails. Reading the business behind the wealth is the part of this seat the case files practise.

START HERE · Personal guarantees

// 05 — A DAY IN THE SEAT

  1. 08:30A client's position reviewed with the investment adviser before the client asks: what moved, and what it means for the lending against it.
  2. 10:00A loan against shares, or a property proposal, to credit — the business behind the wealth, and what happens to the loan if that business stops.
  3. 12:30A client lunch with a business owner most of whose net worth is one company.
  4. 14:30A family's structure on one page: the trust, the company, the personal balance sheet, and which of them the bank is lending to.
  5. 16:00Onboarding diligence: where the wealth came from, and the evidence for it.
  6. 18:00Availability — the seat's real product — and the message answered before the client wonders.

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 the bank would put you in front of its most valuable clients — the panel's question, tested every week.
  • Whether you can read the business behind the wealth, and say what the loan depends on.
  • Whether source-of-wealth diligence is a discipline you own rather than a form you complete.
  • Whether colleagues in commercial and corporate banking refer their owners to you.
  • Whether you can be discreet under pressure, and say no to a client who does not need you.

// 07 — WHAT YOU SEE FROM HERE

How wealth is actually held — structures, trusts, companies, the one business most of it depends on — and the credit committee from the private side, where the borrower is a person and the security is a business or a property that person controls. It is the seat that sees the owner's whole position, which most lending desks only glimpse through a guarantee.

// 08 — THE FILES TO PRACTISE ON

// 09 — WHERE THE SEAT LEADS

Senior private banker, head of a private bank, or wealth advisory and family-office seats; some move across to corporate coverage of the businesses their clients own. The seat builds slowly because trust does, and the bankers who last are the ones clients follow between institutions.

// 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 · THE CONDUCT · CONFLICTS

A borrower's accountant offers to send you new clients: 'and we'll make it worth your while.'

What should you hear?

1 FILES · PICK A CALL ON ANY OF THEM

5 MORE ON THE CONDUCT · CONFLICTS →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.