The Four Signals
What are the Four Signals a commercial banking interview is really testing?
ONE OF 80 TERMS · FREE · NO SIGNUP
BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED
// THE SHORT ANSWER
The Four Signals are what a senior banker is listening for beneath the printed interview questions — the early traces of the three questions becoming a temperament. Credit instinct: asking about durability before asking about growth. Structural thinking: organising a description around categories rather than chronology. Intellectual honesty: saying plainly what one does and does not know, which is the precondition for the other two. Coachability: meeting a correction with curiosity rather than defensiveness. Together they are what is meant by the vague verdict that a candidate has "something there".
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.
// IN THE BOOK
Developed in chapter 2, The Hidden Curriculum.
// WORKED IN
// NEXT TO IT
// SUBSCRIBE
The Lab.
One case file and one question, in your inbox every Tuesday morning, New Zealand time. The senior banker's read opens only after you answer.
FREE WITH IT · THREE PDFS
An interview case, an annotated credit paper, and a one-page loan application sheet.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Educational content only.