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// EXAM HALLTHE ASSESSMENT CENTRE

Bank Assessment Centre Practice Case

A whole case, forty-five minutes, and a recommendation on paper before you read anyone else's.

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// THE SHORT ANSWER

A bank assessment centre practice case is a whole file worked against the clock: a company, its financials and a request, with forty-five minutes to read it, decide and write a recommendation down. Sit it here on the site's composite cases. Read in a lender's order, find the number the decision rests on, and keep a third of the time for writing, because a reading with nothing on paper scores as nothing. Then stop, read the senior banker's read, and mark yourself on what the room scores: the order, the number, and whether you decided.

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.

// THE CLOCK

45:00

Banks differ, and the case is typically under an hour including the writing. Thirty minutes to read and decide, fifteen to write. A reading with nothing on paper scores as nothing. Nothing you do here is recorded.

// HOW TO SIT IT

  1. 01

    Take a case from the list below. Open the file and stop before the senior banker's read.

  2. 02

    Start the clock and read the ask first. What is being requested, and what does the task want back?

  3. 03

    Read the file in a lender's order. What grew and what it is made of, whether the earnings became cash, whether the request matches the need, and only then the way out.

  4. 04

    Find the one number. The thing the decision rests on: cash against debt, a customer's share, a cycle that lengthened.

  5. 05

    With fifteen minutes left, write. One line of recommendation, three reasons, two conditions and the fact that would reverse it. Then the risks and the questions for management.

  6. 06

    Stop at zero. Then read the senior banker's read and mark yourself.

// MARK YOURSELF

  • Did you read in an order, or wherever your eye landed?
  • Did you find the number the decision rests on?
  • Did you decide, with reasons a desk would recognise, inside the time?
  • Is your recommendation the first line on the page?
  • Does each question for management say what you expect the answer to show?
  • Where the pack was silent, did you say what you would want to know rather than invent a fact?

For what the room is scoring and why, read The Assessment Centre Case Study.

// THE CASES

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Read 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.

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CASE PACK · LIVEUS$39

Banking Interview Case Pack — Vol 1

Four composite cases. Interview prep for credit-track candidates. 42-page PDF + Excel workbook.

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