What each question is testing, what a strong answer sounds like, and the one question that decides it.
// THE BOARD
Every seat on the board is a different vocabulary for the same question, and every panel is listening for the same thing: what could go wrong here, and what would you do about it.
BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED
A commercial banking interview is not an investment banking interview. Nobody asks for a DCF. The panel hands you a borrower and asks what you would do, and it is assessing three capacities continuously: can you read a set of numbers and say what is happening in the business behind them; can you say it crisply enough that a credit committee could act on it; and will you reach a conclusion — including an uncomfortable one — and defend it without collapsing or digging in. This page walks the opening, the file question, the structure and pressure questions and the close, with what a strong answer sounds like at each.
BASIS Practitioner judgment from sixteen years in commercial banking, set out in How Bankers Think (Highbank Press, 2026). Every borrower on this site is a composite constructed for teaching, not a client. The market is mid-market commercial lending as practised in New Zealand and Australia; where a convention differs elsewhere, the page says so.
By the time you sit down, the panel has read your CV. What they cannot read from it is the thing they are actually hiring: whether you can be handed a borrower's file and form a view that survives someone else's scrutiny. Everything they ask is a way of getting at that.
Three capacities are being assessed, and they are assessed continuously rather than question by question. Can you read a set of numbers and say what is happening in the business behind them. Can you say it crisply enough that a credit committee could act on it. And are you willing to reach a conclusion — including an uncomfortable one — and then defend it without either collapsing or digging in.
This is why most interview preparation transfers badly. The genre optimises for recall: a bank of questions, a model answer under each. Commercial banking panels are not testing recall, and a memorised answer is usually detectable within two sentences — it arrives too complete, too smooth, and it does not adjust when the interviewer changes one fact. The questions below are worth preparing for. They are not worth scripting.
Senior interviewers rarely name what they are listening for, but it has a shape, and the book this site works from gives it one: the Four Signals. Credit instinct — a mind that moves first to durability, and only then to growth. Structural thinking — an answer organised by category rather than chronology. Intellectual honesty — naming the edge of what you know without bluffing. Coachability — revising the view when a new fact arrives. Every question on this page is one of those four, wearing different clothes; the behavioural questions in section 10 are labelled with which.
Programmes differ and change year to year, so check the bank's own page for the specifics. The shape below is the common one for graduate and early-career hiring in this market, and it matters because each stage is screening for something different.
01
Online assessments
Reading a table under time pressure; workplace instincts that match the bank's.
02
A recorded video interview
Structure and stopping — no interviewer to rescue a rambling answer.
03
An assessment centre
The file question with more time and a written output; holding a position without dominating the room.
04
Final interviews with the desk
The file question in person, with follow-ups that change one fact at a time.
01Online assessments
Numerical and verbal reasoning, a situational-judgement test, and at some banks a short economics or ethics assessment. Time-boxed, often with a window of a day or two to complete.
SCREENS FOR Whether you can read a table under time pressure and whether your instincts about workplace situations match the bank's. Do them rested, on a proper screen, and treat the situational test as a credit question: the safe-looking answer is not always the disciplined one.
02A recorded video interview
Five to eight questions, a short preparation window for each, up to two or three minutes to answer, no retakes. The opening questions live here — tell me about yourself, why commercial banking, why this bank — with one or two behavioural ones.
SCREENS FOR Structure and stopping. There is no interviewer to rescue a rambling answer, so a three-sentence answer that ends cleanly outperforms a two-minute one that trails off. Practise to a timer, look at the lens, and leave the last fifteen seconds unused.
03An assessment centre
Typically a half day: a behavioural interview, an individual case built on a company description and a set of financials with a request, and a group exercise. Some programmes send the case as pre-work.
SCREENS FOR The case is the file question with more time and a written output; the group exercise is watched for whether you can hold a position without dominating the room. Section 07 is the case; section 10 is the group exercise's failure modes.
04Final interviews with the desk
One or two conversations with the people you would work for, usually one from the relationship side and one from credit. Experienced hires typically skip the first three stages and meet these two, sometimes with a take-home case.
SCREENS FOR The file question, in person, with follow-ups that change one fact at a time. Everything on this page from section 07 onward is written for this room.
Most guides to banking interviews are written from New York or London, and most of what they say about the questions travels. What does not travel is the room. Commercial banking in New Zealand and Australia is organised differently from the investment banks those guides describe, and five things about it change what a candidate should expect.
01The relationship side and credit are separate seats, and both are usually in the room.
In most banks here the person who wins and manages the client is not the person who approves the loan. A panel for either seat typically includes someone from the other: a relationship manager interviewing for an analyst, or a credit reader sitting in on a relationship hire. Prepare for both readers. The relationship side listens for whether you can hold a client; the credit side listens for whether you can read one.
02The credit-side reader marks the reading order, not the conclusion.
A credit reader on a panel has approved and declined hundreds of files that looked like the one in front of you. They are not testing whether you reach their answer; they are testing whether you got there in an order that would survive their committee — what grew, whether it converted, what the cycle did, whether the request matches. Then they change one fact and watch whether the order holds.
03The files are owner-managed, seasonal and cyclical, and the questions follow.
The borrowers a desk here reads are more often owner-managed businesses than listed ones: a dairy operation on a payout cycle, a retailer whose year is decided by Christmas, an exporter paid in someone else's currency, a logistics firm with one customer. Expect questions about personal guarantees, seasonal facilities that must clear each year, and concentration — and expect the panel to know the sector better than the textbook does. The drills on this site are built from exactly these files.
04The products have local names; the question underneath does not.
Overdrafts, seasonal facilities and term loans are the working vocabulary; "revolver" is understood but less used. When a panel asks what facility you would offer, it is asking whether the shape of the money matches the shape of the need. Answer the second question and use whatever the local word is.
05Graduate programmes rotate; experienced hires meet the desk.
Programmes at the larger banks typically move a graduate through segments — business, agricultural, corporate — before a seat, so the panel is hiring a reader who will be useful in several rooms, and asks accordingly. An experienced hire is interviewed for one desk by the people on it, and the file question is that desk's file.
The files those panels hand across the table are the ones the case drills are built from: a dairy succession, a seasonal retailer, an exporter paid in another currency, a logistics firm with one customer. Working three of them is the closest thing to sitting the interview early.
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking · Intellectual honesty
“Tell me about yourself.” The first question in almost every commercial banking interview, and the one most often answered at four times the length it deserves. It is not a request for your history. It is a test of whether you can answer an open question with structure and then stop. Three sentences: where you are now, what you are optimising for next, and one specific thing about this desk that makes it the right step. Reciting the CV chronologically is the common failure — the panel has it in front of them, and reading it back says either that you have nothing else or that you assume they did not prepare.
“Why commercial banking?” The answer that lands names something about the work itself rather than about you. Commercial banking is a long game played with the same borrowers over years, where the interesting problem is usually not whether a business is good but whether a good business can be financed in a form an institution can hold. An answer that could equally introduce a career in consulting, wealth, or markets has not answered the question.
“Why this bank?” One specific, checkable observation beats three general compliments. Something about the book this desk actually writes, the segment it is known for, the market it is closest to. Panels discount praise automatically; they do not discount evidence that a candidate looked.
Four more that belong to the same round, and what each is for:
“What does a commercial banker actually do?”
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking — Whether you have looked past the job title.
Name the loop rather than the tasks: a banker reads a business, decides what obligation it can carry and in what form, and then lives with that decision for years. An answer that lists products has described a brochure.
“What is the difference between commercial, business and corporate banking here?”
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking — Whether you know which desk you are sitting in front of.
Say it by borrower size and by who reads the file — owner-managed businesses with a relationship manager and a credit reader, versus larger corporates with more structure and more people — and then say which one you are applying to and why.
“Which part of commercial banking interests you most?”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether the interest is specific enough to survive a bad quarter.
One segment, one reason tied to how its cash actually moves — seasonal retail, contracted logistics, agriculture on a payout cycle — and one thing you have already read or worked on it.
“Tell me something that is not on your CV.”
LISTENING FOR Intellectual honesty — Judgment about relevance, not disclosure.
One thing that shows you reading a situation and acting on it, told in three sentences. It does not need to be about banking; it needs to be about noticing.
These are the questions candidates most often try to prepare by reading the news, and the news is the wrong place to start. A panel is not testing whether you know what happened last month. It is testing whether you can connect anything that happens to a line in a borrower's numbers — and whether you can describe a mechanism in order. What follows is how to prepare a view, not the view; markets move, and the view is yours to form.
“How does a commercial bank make money?”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether you connect margin to credit.
The spread between what the bank pays for funds and what it charges for loans, plus fees — earned only on the loans that come back. The answer that lands says that last clause: credit losses are the cost of the business, not an accident that happens to it.
“What happens to a loan book when the economy slows?”
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking — Whether you can describe a mechanism in order.
Working capital lines get drawn first, cash conversion slips before profit does, covenant tests catch up a quarter or two later, and the borrowers that were only ever funded by growth are found out. Say the order; the order is the point.
“Interest rates fall by a full point. Who is better off, who is worse off?”
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking — Whether you separate the borrower's position from the bank's.
Floating-rate borrowers get relief at once and fixed-rate ones on refinancing; the bank's own margin depends on how fast its deposits reprice against its loans. Two sides, one sentence each, no forecast.
“Which sector would you be uncomfortable lending to right now, and why?”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether discomfort has a structure or is a mood.
Do not answer with a sector as a verdict. Answer with the mechanism you would worry about — a cash cycle that does not close, income and collateral that fail together, one customer carrying the revenue — and what evidence would make you comfortable. The Lendability Matrix is a clean way to organise it.
“Tell me about a current issue affecting borrowers in this market.”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether you read for the credit consequence rather than the headline.
Prepare two from the last month. For each, say what it does to a specific line in a borrower's numbers — days, margin, cover — before you say anything about the economy.
“What have you noticed about our bank?”
LISTENING FOR Intellectual honesty — Whether you looked.
One checkable observation about the book this desk writes, the segment it is known for, or something recently published — and what it made you want to ask.
The mechanism behind most of these — where a bank earns its margin and where it loses it — is set out in how banks work and how banks manage credit risk. The sector question is the Lendability Matrix asked out loud.
There is a floor, and it is not negotiable. Nobody will ask you to build a model for a credit seat, because the desk does not value businesses — it decides whether a business can carry an obligation in a form the bank can hold. But the numbers that decide that must be read cold, and panels test them casually: a figure dropped into conversation, a “what does that make their cover?”, and hesitation answers the question. Clearing the floor earns nothing; failing to clear it ends the interview early.
THE NUMBER · WHAT IT ANSWERS · HOW A PANEL DROPS IT IN
Leverage — net debt to EBITDA
How many years of earnings the debt represents, before any of it is spent on interest, tax or capital.
"So what does that make their leverage?" — and then whether you attach the same adjective to a contracted infrastructure operator and a fashion retailer at the same multiple.
Interest cover — EBIT or EBITDA to interest
How much earnings can fall before the business stops covering the cost of its debt.
"Rates go up two hundred points — does the cover still hold?"
Debt service cover — cash available for debt service to principal plus interest
Whether the business pays principal as well as interest out of cash, which is the number term debt is actually lent against.
"They are asking for a five-year term loan — what is the cover on the repayments, not just the interest?"
Current and quick ratios
Whether near-term obligations are met by near-term assets, and how much of the answer is inventory.
"Current ratio is 1.8 — is that good?" The panel wants to hear you ask what is inside the current assets before you answer.
Debtor, inventory and payables days
Where the working capital sits and whether it is moving — the three lines that turn a cash cycle into days.
"Debtor days have gone from the thirties to the fifties over two years. Does it matter?"
Cash conversion cycle — debtor days plus inventory days minus payables days
How many days the business funds between paying suppliers and being paid, which — applied to sales — sizes a working capital facility.
"Sales are up twenty per cent. Roughly how much more working capital does that need?"
Profit-to-cash conversion — operating cash flow to net profit
Whether the earnings on the income statement became cash, read as a trend over several years rather than a single ratio.
"Profit is up and operating cash flow is down. Give me three explanations, and tell me which one worries you."
The graded skill sits one step above the arithmetic: reading the number. The same leverage multiple means something different for a contracted infrastructure operator and a fashion retailer, and a candidate who attaches the same adjective to both has computed the number without reading it. The cycle is worked through in dollars in the cash conversion cycle example; the trend that matters most is in cash flow analysis for business lending.
Seven concept questions sit on the same floor, and each has a trap:
“How can a profitable company run out of cash?”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether you know the difference between an income statement and a bank balance.
Growth that has to be funded before it is paid for — debtors and inventory absorbing cash faster than profit creates it — plus capital spending and debt repayment that never touch the income statement.
“Why is EBITDA not cash flow?”
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking — Whether you can list what sits between the two.
Working capital movements, capital expenditure, tax, and interest — and the observation that a business can grow EBITDA every year while its cash goes the other way.
“When would you use an overdraft, a term loan, or a revolving facility?”
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking — Whether you match the money to the need rather than to the product you know.
Say what the money is for first: a seasonal build that clears, permanent working capital that does not, an asset with a life. Then name the facility whose shape matches, and the one that would fail in the first hard quarter.
“What is the difference between security and a guarantee?”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether you understand what a second way out actually is.
Security is a claim on a specific asset; a guarantee is a promise from another party to pay. Then the sentence the panel is waiting for: neither is a reason to lend, both are what you do about being wrong.
“What does a financial covenant actually catch?”
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking — Whether you think of covenants as tripwires or as paperwork.
A covenant is an early warning that turns a private deterioration into a conversation the bank is entitled to have. Name one, say what it would catch and roughly when, and say what it would miss.
“What are the early warning signs that a borrower is in trouble?”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether you watch for what is not happening as well as what is.
Slower debtors, drawn lines that stop clearing, reports that arrive late or in a changed format, a chief financial officer whose tone no longer matches the numbers. Two from the numbers, two from the silence.
“Why is customer concentration a credit risk?”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether you see the borrower's balance sheet and its biggest customer's as one exposure.
Because the bank is lending to the customer's willingness to keep buying, and a ninety-day break clause makes a five-year contract a ninety-day one. Say what would mitigate it and what would not.
The facility question is worked at length in temporary or permanent working capital, the covenant question in loan covenants, explained, the warning signs in the bank annual review, and concentration in Issue 05, where one customer is fifty-eight per cent of revenue and the contract has a ninety-day break clause.
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct · Structural thinking · Coachability
“Walk me through this borrower.” A page slides across the table: three years of high-level financials and a request. You have ninety seconds. This is the only question that cannot be prepared as an answer, because the panel supplies the material — and it is the question the rest of the interview is interpreted around.
What separates the strong answers is not vocabulary but order. Read what grew. Test whether the earnings converted to cash. Look at what happened to the cash conversion cycle — debtor days, inventory, payables — because that is where revenue growth either funds itself or quietly consumes the balance sheet. Then, and only then, look at the request and ask whether it matches the absorption already visible in the numbers. A candidate who does that in order will reach a defensible view even if it is not the panel's view. A candidate who narrates the numbers without ever forming one has answered nothing.
THE NINETY SECONDS, IN ORDER
Then expect the panel to change one fact — debtor days, the contract, the owner's drawings — and ask again. The reading order is what lets you answer the version nobody anticipated.
The failure mode worth naming: hedging dressed as rigour. “I'd want to see aged debtors before forming a view” is a reasonable sentence that becomes an evasion when it is the whole answer. Ask for the aged debtors and say what you expect them to show, and why it would change your mind.
In an assessment centre the same question arrives with more time and a written output: a company description, a set of financials, a request, and three tasks — the risks you see, the questions you would put to management, and whether you would lend and how. Spend the first third of the time on the reading order above, and write the recommendation first: one line, three reasons, two conditions, and the one fact that would reverse it. A free case worked to exactly that shape, with the ninety seconds you would say out loud, is the sample case.
This exact question, with a worked file and the senior interviewer's read on all four answers, is question two of the interview quiz. The reading order behind it is the Three Diagnostics, which you can run against a real set of numbers in the diagnostics calculator.
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking · Intellectual honesty
“What facility would you offer? What tenor? What security?” These are one question in three costumes, and the thing being tested is whether you fit a structure to the borrower's cash cycle or reach for the most familiar product. Term debt for a working capital need, a smooth-cycle limit lent to a lumpy business, a covenant calendar set against the calendar rather than the trade cycle: all of them sound reasonable in a meeting and fail in the first difficult quarter.
A strong answer usually starts by naming what the money is for, specifically enough to size it — seasonal inventory build, a named contract, timing insurance — and only then reaches for a product. Where a fact is missing, the answer says what it would gate on rather than guessing. Issue 02 is this question worked at length: a multi-currency request from a borrower who will not name the currencies, where the senior read structures around what is evidenced instead of approving or refusing the whole thing.
LISTENING FOR Intellectual honesty · Coachability
“The client needs an answer by Friday.” “They have been with the bank twenty years.” “What would make you say no?” Pressure questions test whether a position survives contact with a relationship. The panel is not looking for someone who cannot be moved; they are looking for someone who can be moved by evidence and not by pressure, and who can tell the two apart in the room.
Two symmetrical failures. The candidate for whom everything is risky has not demonstrated rigour, only that they will be useless on a clean file. The candidate who cannot name a case where they would decline has not yet understood what the credit function is for. The answer that works names a structural condition — the request does not match the cycle, the release is a one-way door, the disclosure came through the accountant rather than the borrower — and then says what would need to change.
It is worth practising the other direction too, because it is rarer and panels notice. Issue 04 is a file where the disciplined answer is to approve as requested, in full, quickly — and to resist attaching conditions that would cost a clean borrower monthly administration to buy the bank nothing. Saying yes well is a credit skill.
Panels in this market ask these as “tell me about a time”, and most candidates prepare them as stories. Prepare them as evidence instead. Each one is listening for one of the four signals in section 01, and the story is only the container. The situation-task-action-result shape is fine; what a panel remembers is the result sentence, and the result sentence needs a decision or a number in it.
What an interviewer actually writes down after a behavioural answer is short: whether the situation was real and yours, whether you did something rather than something happened to you, whether the result had a cost or a number in it, and whether the follow-up question changed your story. The fourth is the one candidates do not prepare for, so each question below carries the follow-up a panel is likely to use.
The preparation that works is one story per signal, not one story per question. Four stories, each true, each under ninety seconds, each with a decision at the end, will cover every behavioural question a commercial banking panel asks — the same story about a client who wanted the wrong facility answers “a difficult client”, “a time you said no” and “a time you held a position” without a word changed. The skeletons under each question are not scripts: the brackets are the parts that must be yours, and nothing outside them is a sentence to say.
“Tell me about a time you changed your mind because of new information.”
LISTENING FOR Coachability — Whether your view moves on evidence.
Name the evidence, the moment it arrived, and what you did differently the same day. An answer with no cost in it did not involve changing your mind.
A USABLE ANSWER, BLANKS LEFT IN
THE FOLLOW-UP
"What would have happened if you had not changed it?" — the panel is checking that the new fact actually mattered, and that you can say so without inflating it.
“Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone senior to you.”
LISTENING FOR Intellectual honesty — Whether you can hold a position and still be moved by argument rather than rank.
The disagreement in one sentence, what you said, what they said, how it resolved — and whether you were right, said plainly either way.
A USABLE ANSWER, BLANKS LEFT IN
THE FOLLOW-UP
"Were you right?" — either answer works if it is plain. A story in which you were right and the senior person was foolish is the one panels believe least.
“Tell me about a time you looked into something others had taken at face value.”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether your first move is towards the downside.
What made you look, what you found, what changed because you looked. Small and true beats large and vague.
A USABLE ANSWER, BLANKS LEFT IN
THE FOLLOW-UP
"What if you had found nothing?" — the panel wants to know whether the looking was a discipline or a lucky guess, and whether you would do it again at the cost of being wrong.
“Explain something complex to someone outside your field.”
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking — Whether you organise by category rather than chronology.
The panel is not listening to the topic. It is listening for a structure — three parts, named, in an order that makes sense to a stranger — and for whether you stopped when the structure was complete.
A USABLE ANSWER, BLANKS LEFT IN
THE FOLLOW-UP
"Explain it to me now, in a minute." — the panel will often ask for the explanation itself, and mark the structure, not the topic.
“Tell me about a mistake, and what you did about it.”
LISTENING FOR Intellectual honesty — Whether you can name the edge of what you knew.
A real mistake, owned in the first sentence, then what you did within the day and what you do differently now. A mistake that turns out to have been someone else's is the wrong choice of story.
A USABLE ANSWER, BLANKS LEFT IN
THE FOLLOW-UP
"Who else knew?" — the panel is listening for whether you told the person who needed to know before they found out, which is the whole of intellectual honesty in a credit job.
“Tell me about managing competing deadlines.”
LISTENING FOR Structural thinking — Whether you triage by consequence.
Which one you did first and why — the one with the irreversible cost, not the one that was loudest — and what you told the person whose work moved.
A USABLE ANSWER, BLANKS LEFT IN
THE FOLLOW-UP
"What did you drop?" — an answer in which nothing was dropped has not described competing deadlines; it has described a busy week.
“A client wanted something that was not right for them. What did you do?”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether you can say no to a person you like, and how.
What they asked for, why it did not fit, what you offered instead, and whether they stayed. The last part matters: a no that ends the relationship and a no that keeps it are different skills.
A USABLE ANSWER, BLANKS LEFT IN
THE FOLLOW-UP
"Did they stay?" — panels ask because the answer separates a no that ended a relationship from a no that kept one, and only the second is the job.
“Tell me about a decision you made with incomplete information.”
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct — Whether you can commit without pretending to certainty.
What you knew, what you did not, what you decided, and what you set up to find out whether you were right. That last clause is the whole job.
A USABLE ANSWER, BLANKS LEFT IN
THE FOLLOW-UP
"What would you have needed to see to decide the other way?" — the panel is testing whether the decision had a reversal condition or was a guess with a confident voice.
Two stories panels believe least: the one in which you were right and everyone senior to you was foolish, and the one in which the mistake turns out to have been somebody else's. Two they believe most: a small thing you noticed that nobody asked you to, and a no that kept the relationship.
The group exercise at an assessment centre is the same test run in public. Panels mark the person who moved the group's answer with a reason, not the person who spoke most — and they notice who asked the quiet candidate what they thought.
The same four signals, weighted differently by seat. Five stems for each, with what the panel is listening for; the credit analyst and relationship manager questions are worked in full on their own pages, and the file question is common to all three.
THE FRONT LINE
Owns the client
9SEATS
WHAT THE INTERVIEW TESTS
Whether you can read a business as well as sell to one — the panel still hands you a file.
MARKETS
The brainteaser round
Mental arithmetic under pressure, a view on a market, and what you do when the position goes against you.
Relationship manager — relationship manager interview
Two halves, and most candidates prepare one: the book questions (how you would grow a portfolio, and whether the answer is a method or enthusiasm) and the credit half, because a relationship manager who cannot read a business is a salesperson the bank cannot afford.
“Walk me through how you would grow this book.”
Whether there is a method — segments, referral sources, a cadence — or a mood.
“Here is a client's summary financials — what do you see, and what do you ask next?”
The same file question, asked of the seat that is supposed to be on the client's side.
“Credit declined the request. What do you tell the client?”
Whether you can carry a no without blaming credit or promising to overturn it.
“When did you last walk away from revenue, and why?”
Whether you have ever declined income for a structural reason, and can name it.
“A client's biggest customer is half their revenue. How do you talk to them about it?”
Whether you can raise a credit problem as a relationship conversation.
THE CREDIT LINE
Owns the lending decision
5SEATS
WHAT THE INTERVIEW TESTS
A file, a recommendation, and whether you hold it when the room pushes back.
Credit analyst — credit analyst interview questions
The floor is tested harder and the writing is tested at all: the memo question (recommendation first, then the reasons) and the committee question (your recommendation is challenged by someone senior — what do you do).
“Revenue is up and operating cash flow is down. What are the possible explanations?”
Whether you can list the mechanisms in order and say which one worries you.
“How would you size a working capital limit for this business?”
Whether you size from the cycle and the sales it carries, or from what was asked for.
“What covenants would you set here, and what would each one actually catch?”
Whether a covenant is a tripwire to you or a form.
“Your recommendation — and what would change your mind?”
Whether you can commit and stay movable by evidence.
“A file you recommended goes wrong eighteen months later. What do you do first?”
Whether the first move is to the borrower's cash position or to the file's defence.
Graduate programme — the career path
Potential over track record: whether you can be taught to read a business, and whether you will hold a view once you have one. The file question is set easier and marked harder on the reasoning.
“What in your degree would a credit desk actually use?”
Whether you can translate what you learned into what the desk does — cash, not concepts.
“Tell me about a group project that went badly.”
Whether you describe what you did about it rather than who was to blame.
“Here are three numbers from a small business. What would you want to know first?”
The first move: towards the durability of the cash flows, or towards the growth.
“Which of our clients' industries do you understand best, and how?”
Whether interest has produced knowledge — a payout cycle, a season, a contract — or only enthusiasm.
“What would you do in your first month on the desk?”
Whether you know the job is reading files and asking questions, not presenting.
RISK · COMPLIANCE · AUDIT
Owns the standard
7SEATS
The interview is looking for a specific temperament — independence without obstruction, and the ability to say no with a reason a business person can act on.
Risk, compliance, financial crime, model validation and internal audit recruit heavily out of technology, operations and finance — and they recruit the people who can already read a business.
WHAT THE INTERVIEW TESTS
Whether you can be independent without being obstructive — and say no with a reason.
THE FUNCTIONS
Larger than all of it
13SEATS
They also hire on their own discipline first: an engineer is interviewed as an engineer, an accountant as an accountant. Banking is the second question, not the first.
In every one of these seats the distance between competent and valuable is whether you understand what the bank is actually exposed to.
TECHNOLOGY
The system-design round
The engineering, then one banking question: what breaks, and who is hurt when it does.
FINANCE
The technical accounting round
Technical accounting, then whether you can explain a number to someone who will act on it.
OPERATIONS
The exceptions round
Process judgment under exceptions: what you do with the item that does not fit the procedure.
LISTENING FOR Credit instinct
“What would you like to ask us?” Still part of the interview, and the last piece of evidence about how you think. Questions about culture and progression are not wrong, but they are indistinguishable from every other candidate's. Questions about the desk are not: what the book is weighted towards, how a deal moves from the relationship side to credit and back, what a first year on this desk is spent doing, where the panel thinks the segment is heading. Ask what you actually want to know — you are also deciding.
Five that only this desk could answer:
One thing a day, all of it free and none of it a script. The plan front-loads the reading and ends with saying things out loud, because the interview is spoken.
Read how a bank actually earns its margin and where it loses it, so the commercial-awareness questions have a mechanism behind them. How banks work.
Twenty terms from the glossary, read the way a credit desk uses them rather than the way a textbook does. The floor in section 06 is the list. The glossary.
Run the Three Diagnostics on two sets of numbers you type in yourself — one business you think is fine and one you think is not — and see whether the read agrees with you. Three Diagnostics calculator.
Work Issue 01 and Issue 04 back to back: the same working capital request, opposite conclusions. That pair is the file question. The two files, side by side.
The five-question interview quiz, answering before you see the senior interviewer's read on all four options. The interview quiz.
The ninety-second walkthrough in section 07, said out loud three times against any published set of accounts, to a timer.
Write down the three questions you will ask them, and the one structural condition on which you would decline a file. Then stop preparing.
The mistakes panels see most, in roughly the order they cost the most:
BEFORE YOU GO IN
Not investment banking technicals. If the role is in an investment bank, the interview is a different genre — discounted cash flow, the three-statement link, accretion and dilution, and questions with a single correct answer. That material is worth preparing from sources that specialise in it. Nothing on this page will help with it, and preparing from the wrong genre is the most common avoidable mistake in this market — the differences are set out plainly in commercial banking vs investment banking.
Not model answers. There are no scripts here because scripts are the failure mode. What is offered is the shape of a strong answer and what the question is testing, which is what lets you answer a version of the question nobody anticipated.
Not a guarantee, and not advice. Panels differ, markets differ, and this is written from commercial banking practice in New Zealand and Australia. Every borrower named on this site is a fictional composite built for teaching.
If your interview is for a specific seat, two companion pages sharpen this one: credit analyst interview questions adds the memo question and the committee question, and relationship manager interview adds the book questions and the one about carrying a no back to a client.
Reading about the questions is the cheap half. The useful half is answering one before you see how a senior banker answered it, which is the format everything free on this site is built in.
The interview quiz is five questions panels genuinely ask, each with the senior interviewer's read on all four answers — including why the tempting one is tempting. The case drills are the file question at full length: a borrower, the data on the table, one judgment call, and the senior banker's reading afterwards. The Three Diagnostics calculator runs the reading order in section 07 against numbers you enter yourself. All three are free and need no signup. If a term in a question is unfamiliar, the glossary defines it the way a credit desk uses it rather than the way a textbook does.
For candidates who want the interview material worked at depth, the Banking Interview Case Pack is four composite credit cases with the senior banker's read, ninety-second walkthroughs, and the curveballs interviewers use. It is a paid, standalone purchase; nothing free is gated behind it.
Questions are the easy half. The hard half is holding a whole file in your head while you answer them. Case 01 of the interview case pack — Northmark Engineering, a working capital request that reads as growth and behaves as something else — is free in full: the file, the diagnostic worked line by line, and the ninety seconds you would actually say out loud.
Get the free case →
