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// DIAGNOSTICS / THE FRONT LINE
5 QUESTIONS · 7 MINUTES · NO SIGNUP

Interview Quiz: The Front Line

FIVE QUESTIONS · FOUR ANSWERS EACH

Everyone whose name a customer knows — from a branch counter to an institutional coverage seat. The lending seats on that line are interviewed on a file, and the credit quiz covers them. These five questions are for the front-line seats that do not lend: a personal banker, a private banker, a markets salesperson, a transaction banker and a product manager. Each of them is still asked about credit, in its own clothes. Pick the answer closest to yours; the senior interviewer's read follows each one.

5 questions · ~7 minutes · No signup, no email required

// FOUR BLOCKS, FOUR QUIZZES

A bank hires in four blocks, and each block's panel asks different questions. This one is yours.

// THE FIVE QUESTIONS IN THIS ROUND

The four answers to each, and the senior interviewer's read of every one, open when you start.

  1. 01 · How would you notice someone is in financial difficulty before they tell you?

    A customer of many years comes into the branch and asks for a higher limit on their credit card, “just to get through the next couple of months”. They are friendly, a little rushed, and the system would approve the increase.

    ASKED FOR · Personal banker

  2. 02 · A client asks for something that is legal and not in their interest. What do you do?

    A client sold her business last year and was paid partly in shares of the company that bought it. She wants to borrow heavily against those shares to buy a property for her son. The loan fits the bank's lending rules. If the share price fell a long way, the bank would ask for part of the loan back — at the moment the shares were worth least.

    ASKED FOR · Private banker

  3. 03 · A client loses money on a hedge you sold them. What happens next?

    Last year you sold an exporter a set of forward contracts to fix the exchange rate on the currency they are paid in. The currency has since moved the other way, so the contracts show a loss, and the exporter's competitors, who did not hedge, are having a better quarter. The finance director calls, angry, and asks you to close the contracts out.

    ASKED FOR · Markets salesperson

  4. 04 · A payment file fails on a Friday afternoon. What is your first move?

    A long-standing manufacturing client's supplier payment run has failed at three o'clock on a Friday. Operations says it was rejected because it would have taken the account past its overdraft limit. The finance director calls: it is only timing, a large payment from a customer is due on Monday, and could you just push the file through.

    ASKED FOR · Transaction banker

  5. 05 · A change would lift revenue and worsen outcomes for some customers. What do you do?

    You own the bank's small-business overdraft. Analysis shows that raising the fee for going over the limit would lift the product's revenue noticeably. Most of the extra fees would come from a small group of customers who go over their limit nearly every month.

    ASKED FOR · Product manager