PART A · QUESTION 1
A credit card carries US$2,000 at 24% a year, charged monthly. The customer has made no new purchases and has paid nothing this month.
// EXAM HALL24 QUESTIONS · 25 MINUTES
Personal Banker Practice Test
Everyday sums, one couple's home loan, and the conversations a counter brings.
BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED
// THE SHORT ANSWER
A personal banker practice test checks the everyday sums a customer will ask about, whether you can take a home loan application through a policy grid, and what you do when a target and a customer pull in different directions. This paper has three parts: the sums, one couple's home loan set on an exhibit, and the conversations at the counter, including a scam and a hardship call. Every question is original, and none comes from any bank's test. Sit it against a twenty-five-minute clock with the reads held to the end, or take it as practice.
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.
// HOW TO SIT IT
Answer below as practice, and each read opens as you go. Or sit it as a test: 25 minutes, with every read held back until you finish.
PART A
The everyday sums
What a customer will ask you across the counter. Work each one before you look at the options.
PART A · QUESTION 2
A customer borrows US$10,000 at 12% a year over three years, and repays US$332 a month.
How much interest do they pay in all?
PART A · QUESTION 3
A customer keeps US$5,000 in savings at 3% and carries US$5,000 on a credit card at 20%. They say the savings are for a rainy day.
Roughly what does holding both cost them a year?
PART A · QUESTION 4
A US$400,000 home loan at 6%, interest-only for the first five years.
What do they pay each month, and what do they owe after five years?
PART A · QUESTION 5
A customer has US$50,000 in a 12-month term deposit at 4%. After six months they want it back. The terms pay half the agreed rate on money taken out early.
How much interest do they receive?
PART A · QUESTION 6
A customer's savings pay 3% a year. Prices in the shops are rising 5% a year. They feel good about watching the balance grow.
What is happening to what their savings can buy?
PART A · QUESTION 7
A card carries US$3,000 at 24% a year, charged monthly. The customer has been paying the US$60 minimum each month and says the debt is under control.
How much of this month's US$60 reduces the debt?
PART B
The home loan
One couple, nine questions. Read the application against the statements, and the grid last.
EXHIBIT D · THE HOME LOAN
A couple with one child in daycare are buying their first home, and have come to your branch. Figures in US$.
| Details | Figure |
|---|---|
| Partner 1: permanent role, six years | 62,000 a year |
| Partner 2: contract role, eight months | 46,000 a year |
| Price of the home | 450,000 |
| Deposit: their own savings | 35,000 |
| Deposit: a gift from Partner 1's parents | 25,000 |
| Loan asked for, over 30 years at 6.50% | 390,000 |
| Car loan | 310 a month |
| Credit card: limit 12,000 | balance 6,400 |
| Living costs declared, with daycare | 2,200 a month |
| Details | Figure |
|---|---|
| Average living costs | 3,050 a month |
| Direct debits returned unpaid, to a buy-now-pay-later firm not on the application | 2 |
| Details | Line |
|---|---|
| Loan-to-value | up to 90% |
| Debt repayments, with the home loan tested at 8.50% and a card at 3% of its limit | up to 40% of gross income |
| Contract income under 12 months | only with the employer's letter that it will continue |
PART B · QUESTION 8
From Exhibit D.
What is the loan-to-value, and is it inside the grid?
PART B · QUESTION 9
From Exhibit D, on the grid's method. The home loan repayment at the test rate is US$2,999 a month.
What share of gross income do their debt repayments take?
PART B · QUESTION 10
In Exhibit D the loan is offered at 6.50% but tested at 8.50%. One partner asks: 'Why test us on a rate we are not paying?'
What is the honest answer?
PART B · QUESTION 11
Exhibit D's application is over the 40% line. The couple want to know what would bring it inside, without changing the home they are buying.
What do you put to them?
PART B · QUESTION 12
In Exhibit D, Partner 2 has been eight months in a contract role, and the payslips look fine.
What do you do about that income?
PART B · QUESTION 13
Exhibit D's application declares living costs of US$2,200 a month. Three months of statements average US$3,050.
What do you do about the gap?
PART B · QUESTION 14
Exhibit D's statements show two returned direct debits to a buy-now-pay-later firm. The application lists no such debt.
Signal or noise?
PART B · QUESTION 15
About the US$25,000 in Exhibit D, one partner says: 'My parents will want it back when we can manage it.' The application calls it a gift.
What are you hearing?
PART B · QUESTION 16
At the end of the Exhibit D interview, one partner asks: 'My contract will be made permanent soon. Can you just put it down as permanent now?'
Your answer?
PART C
At the counter
The conversations that decide whether the seat is done well.
PART C · QUESTION 17
A retired customer asks to withdraw US$18,000 in cash, with a phone at their ear. They tell you the bank's fraud team has told them to move the money and not to tell staff.
Your move?
PART C · QUESTION 18
A customer rings: made redundant last week, and next month's home loan repayment will not be there. They are embarrassed, and ask what happens now.
What do you do?
PART C · QUESTION 19
It is the last week of the month and you are one credit card short of target. A student comes in about a lost debit card, and mentions they have no wish for a credit card.
Your move?
PART C · QUESTION 20
You notice a colleague opening savings accounts for customers who did not ask for them, to lift the branch's numbers. 'Everyone does it,' they say, 'and nobody is charged anything.'
What then?
PART C · QUESTION 21
A customer's adult son rings. His mother is in hospital, he says, and he needs her balance so he can pay her bills. There is no authority for him on file.
Your answer?
PART C · QUESTION 22
A customer complains about a US$45 fee. The branch's own note shows a colleague promised to waive it. The terms do allow the charge.
Your move?
PART C · QUESTION 23
A customer applying for a loan cannot say what the repayments will be, after you have explained twice. A new friend who came along answers for them, and says the money is for the friend's business.
What do you do?
PART C · QUESTION 24
A borrower tells you: 'Your colleague said my rate would be fixed. Now my bill has gone up.'
What are you hearing?
0 OF 24 ANSWERED · 0 WITH THE SENIOR READ · 0 STANDS UP · 0 OFF THE LINE
// THE REST OF THE ROUND
Every question here is original; none is any bank's real test. Written for: Personal banker.
- Personal banker: the interview questions, against a two-minute clock.
- Situational judgement, for any seat.
- The assessment centre: a whole case in forty-five minutes.
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