The Relationship Manager Scorecard

Every relationship manager in commercial banking is measured on a scorecard, and the scorecard is the single best explanation of their behaviour: why they are eager in one month and cautious in another, why they ask about your deposits, why they sometimes argue with their own credit department and sometimes side with it. The weightings differ from bank to bank and are not published. The lines, and what the lines do to people, are common enough to describe.

The card is worth understanding from three seats. A candidate who understands it walks into the interview already knowing what the job is. A banker who understands it stops taking the tension in the job personally. A borrower who understands it can read their banker's calendar and, on occasion, use it.

Seven lines appear on most cards in some form. The first four are about bringing business in; the last three are about what it turns into.

This is the line that makes the card interesting, and the one the compensation guides leave out. A relationship manager is paid for what they bring in, and then held to account for what it does. The mechanism is a negative-weighted line: a downgrade in the risk grade of an exposure, its move onto the watch list, a provision raised against it, or a loss written off — each counts against the banker in whose book it sits.

Two complications make this an argument inside every bank. The first is time. A facility written in good faith this year does not turn bad until the second or third year, by which point the banker may have moved seats and the downgrade lands on someone else's card. The second is inheritance. Most books are mostly inherited, and a banker who took over a portfolio with problems in it did not create them. Banks distinguish originated from inherited exposure, and they do it imperfectly, and the imperfection is why experienced bankers read a new book carefully in their first quarter and put their reservations in writing.

The reason the line exists at all is the reason the credit chair exists: without it, the person carrying the revenue number would have no stake in the answer being right, only in it being yes.

The calendar. Cards are scored to a year, and a banker who has met the origination line by the final quarter has a different appetite for a marginal deal than one who has not. Near the close of a period a banker behind target will push a file harder; a banker ahead of target will let a marginal one wait, because booking it now adds little and the credit-quality line will remember it for two years. The same request, presented in two different months, can meet two different bankers.

The deposit conversation. Deposits are a line on the card, and they also change what the bank knows about you and what your borrowing costs it to fund. When a banker asks for the operating accounts, they are improving their card and your file's risk read in the same motion.

The argument with credit. The banker is rewarded for the deal closing; the credit reader is rewarded for the book staying sound. Neither is wrong, and the friction between them is the bank's second opinion doing its job. The bankers who navigate it well are the ones who can tell, before writing the paper, which deals will survive the reader — which is most of what knowing when to walk away is for. Pipeline pressure is named there as one of the three things that most often does the arguing in a bad decision, and this card is where the pressure comes from.

Three things, practically. Timing: a request that lands when your banker has room on the card gets an advocate; the same request in a month when they are defending credit quality gets a reader. You will not know which month that is, but you can ask how their year is going and listen to the answer.

The whole relationship: a bank that declines a lending-only request and would approve the same borrowing with the operating accounts attached is not being difficult. It is telling you which lines on the card your request touches, and offering you a way to touch more of them.

And the stake: your banker has a personal, scored interest in your facility performing — not only in it being approved. That is the best reason to bring them bad news early. It is also, when they say no to something you wanted, the reason to take the no seriously; the person saying it is giving up a line on their own card to say it. When the bank says no covers what to do next.

Panels rarely ask about the scorecard directly and listen for it constantly. A candidate who describes the job as winning and keeping clients has described a salesperson. A candidate who says the job is winning the business that will still be sound in three years, and knowing which business to let a competitor have, has described a banker — and has told the panel they already understand why the credit function exists. The relationship manager interview page works the question the job is made of: credit has declined your client's request, and your card has a line for that too.