How to Present a Credit Case in an Interview

The case question looks like a test of analysis and is a test of temperament. Three things are being scored, and none of them is whether you found every ratio. The order you read in: whether you went to the request's fit and the cash before the profit and the sector. The commitment: whether you reached a call, said it first, and held it under the follow-up. And the reversal: whether you can name the one fact that would change your mind — because the panel's next question will change it. The interview page calls this the question that decides it, and it is not an exaggeration.

The site names the traces a senior interviewer listens for the Four Signals; the walkthrough below is built so that a candidate who follows it produces them without having to think about them. Completeness is not on the list. A candidate who covers twelve points in four minutes has told the panel they cannot tell which point matters, which is the one thing the seat cannot teach.

Ninety seconds is about five sentences, and they go in a fixed order. The order is the same one a credit paper goes in, which is not a coincidence: the panel is asking you to write one out loud.

In the shape of a published file — the working capital request on Issue 04 — the five sentences run: I would approve the increase as asked. The cycle is growing with the sales, not faster than them, so the need is the growth and not a problem underneath it. What remains is the customer the growth depends on. I would want the concentration reported, and I would ask what the supply agreement says about volume, because that is what turns this from a yes into a structure. Nothing in that is a ratio. Every part of it is a reading, and the panel can hear the difference.

Because the walkthrough is not the test; it is the setup for the test. A panel that has heard your call and your number now has something to push on, and the push is where the interview is decided. Talk for four minutes and you have used the time the panel needed to find out whether you can think, and you have usually talked yourself out of the call you started with. Five sentences, then stop, then let them come at you. The silence after the fifth sentence is not a failure of preparation. It is the panel deciding what to change.

They will change one fact. The top customer is forty per cent of sales instead of twenty; the season did not clear last year; the owner is sixty-eight and the son is not in the business. What they are watching is not whether your answer changes but whether it changes for a reason you can say. There are three good responses and one bad one. The call moves, and you say which sentence it moved in — “then the risk that remains is the one I would structure for, and the increase becomes a term-out of the permanent part.” The call holds, and you say why the fact does not reach it. Or the call holds but the condition changes. The bad response is the call moving without a reason, because it tells the panel the first answer was a guess.

Prepare for the curveball by asking yourself, before you speak, what would reverse your view. If you know the answer, the fifth sentence is already written, and the panel's change of fact is a question you have asked yourself. That habit is the whole of what a credit desk means by the Three Questions being asked in order; it is enough to name them, and the book is where they are taught.

Recite the ratios. Current ratio, gearing, interest cover, margin — each correct, none read. The panel can compute; it wants to know which one matters here and why.

“It depends.” Everything depends. Say on what, then make the call that follows from the file in front of you, and let the panel change the file.

Ask for more information instead of reading what is there. A list of things you would want to know is a description of a paper you have not written. One question, at the end, with what it would change, is the seat.

Hedge. “On balance it looks broadly supportable subject to further work.” A panel reads that as a candidate who does not want to be wrong, and the seat is one where you are wrong in writing, with your name on it, several times a year.

Apologise for the call. Declining is half the job. A candidate who declines cleanly, names the comeback path and keeps the client is showing the panel the relationship half of the seat at the same time — which is why When the Bank Says No is worth reading before an interview, even though it was written for the other chair.

The method needs files, and the files are free. Every case drill hands you a business, three years of numbers and a request, and holds the senior banker's read back until you have committed: write your five sentences before you open it, then compare the order and the number. Read Issue 04 and Issue 01 as a pair — the same request, opposite calls — because a panel's favourite curveball is the one that turns the first into the second. The free case is one complete file in the interview's own format, with the ninety seconds written out; the case pack has four more with the curveballs a panel pivots to. And the interview quiz scores the temperament the walkthrough is built to show.