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// ← EVERY SEATTHE FRONT LINE

Ground floor · The hall

Transaction Banker

Sells and structures the plumbing a business runs on — accounts, payments, collections, liquidity and trade finance.

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// 01 — WHAT A TRANSACTION BANKER DOES

It is the least glamorous revenue in the bank and among the stickiest: once a company's payroll, receivables and supplier payments run through your systems, it does not move for a basis point. Trade finance sits here too, which puts letters of credit, guarantees and receivables funding in the same conversation as cash management.

// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE

Graduate streams, internal moves from business banking or operations, and specialists who come with a trade or payments background.

// 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. 01Walk me through a client's cash cycle and where we could sit in it.
  2. 02Why would a company pay for a letter of credit rather than trade on open account?
  3. 03What is the difference between a client's liquidity problem and a funding problem?
  4. 04How would you find the transaction banking opportunity in a lending client?
  5. 05A payment file fails on a Friday afternoon. What is your first move?
  6. 06Where does this business actually make money for the bank?

What the panel is listening for. Whether you can see a company as a set of flows rather than a set of products, and whether you understand that operational reliability is the product.

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

Cash flows through the bank's own systems are the earliest, truest warning a lender gets — a receivables pattern breaking is visible here weeks before it reaches a set of accounts.

Payments and collections show a business's working capital moving in real time — the same cycle a credit analyst reconstructs from year-end accounts months later. Knowing what the pattern means when it changes is the read this site practises.

START HERE · The cash conversion cycle, worked

// 05 — A DAY IN THE SEAT

  1. 08:30Overnight exceptions: a payment file that failed, a collection that did not land, a client who noticed before you did.
  2. 09:30A client's cash cycle mapped with the relationship manager: where money comes in, waits, and goes out — and where the bank could sit in it.
  3. 11:00A trade query: the exporter's letter of credit, the documents it demands, and whether the client's paperwork will comply.
  4. 13:00A pitch for a collections solution to a business whose receivables arrive by cheque and by chance.
  5. 14:30A liquidity structure priced: the balances a client keeps, what they are worth to the bank, and what to pay for them.
  6. 16:00The pipeline: which lending clients do not yet run their flows through the bank, and why.

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 can see a company as a set of flows rather than a set of products.
  • Whether you understand that reliability is the product, and treat a failed file as the day's first priority.
  • Whether you can find the transaction banking opportunity inside a lending relationship.
  • Whether you know what a letter of credit, a guarantee and a receivables line each do, and which one a client actually needs.
  • Whether operations trusts you, because everything you sell they have to run.

// 07 — WHAT YOU SEE FROM HERE

The client's own payments and collections as they happen, rather than the year-end snapshot a lender reads — and, often before anyone else in the bank, the first break in a pattern that has held for years. The seat also sees where a bank's stickiest revenue really comes from, which is rarely the loan.

// 08 — THE FILES TO PRACTISE ON

// 09 — WHERE THE SEAT LEADS

Senior transaction banker, head of transaction banking, or the trade finance specialist seats; some move into product, operations leadership or corporate coverage, carrying the flows view with them. Its revenue holds against price competition, though when a client moves its lending, the flows often follow.

// 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 · THE BORROWER · CASH

A borrower's customers have joined a supply-chain finance programme run by their banks. Its debtor days fell from 70 to 30 in one quarter. The relationship manager says it has 'fixed its collections'.

Signal or noise?

1 FILES · PICK A CALL ON ANY OF THEM

5 MORE ON THE BORROWER · CASH →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.