Commercial Credit Lead

Employment Type: Full-time

Position Overview

The Commercial Credit Lead plays a vital role in assessing and managing credit risk for commercial clients at M&T Bank. This client-facing position involves analyzing financial statements, structuring credit solutions, negotiating legal documents, and obtaining credit approval while ensuring compliance with credit policies and regulatory requirements. The Commercial Credit Lead manages a transaction team and collaborates closely with relationship managers (RM), risk officers, and other stakeholders to facilitate sound credit decisions and maintain portfolio quality.

Primary Responsibilities

• Credit Origination & Underwriting:
  • Facilitate the credit needs of customers by underwriting new requests and material modifications from deal screen through approval and for the life of the loan.
  • Analyze financial statements, tax returns, due diligence reports, credit bureaus, appraisals, internal credit information, industry research, and peer data.
  • Determine the need for more thorough investigation or additional information and coordinate gathering such information.
  • Complete credit analyses for the Bank’s commercial transactions, including an independent credit quality assessment with well-supported risk rating, identification of and description of credit risks and mitigants, industry concerns, market trends, financial trends, and other pertinent credit issues.
  • Make appropriate structure recommendations based on an analysis and evaluation of scenarios including the company's case, bank's base case, and a downside case.
  • Propose the structure of loan requests, including suggestions on terms, conditions, collateral, and guarantors.
  • Prepare summary, present facts, and offer opinions concerning creditworthiness.
  • Present analysis or address questions during credit request discussions or committee presentations.
• Portfolio Management & Risk Monitoring:
  • Manage the ongoing credit risk of existing loan portfolios through continuous credit monitoring (CCM) activities.
  • Timely identification of emerging credit risk to enable appropriate actions for risk management, loss minimization, and accurate risk rating assignment.
  • CCM activities include annual reviews, PLRs, Guarantor Assessments, interim update memos, covenant monitoring, problem loan management, early warning indicators, and other credit surveillance.
  • Identify suspicious activity and activity that may be contrary to the customer's interest.
• Collaboration & Communication:
  • Partner proactively with relationship managers and be involved throughout the deal process to maintain timely and accurate risk ratings.
  • Attend client/prospect calls with RMs to gain a thorough understanding of the client/prospect and their business for effective analysis and underwriting.
  • Recommend the risk rating based on underwriting parameters.
• Financial Analysis & Modeling:
  • Spread financial statements and prepare financial models to sensitize various conditions impacting proposed transactions.
  • Prepare cash flow, collateral schedules, covenant sensitivity calculations, financial models, and guarantor statement analysis as appropriate.
• Compliance & Policy Adherence:
  • Ensure credit policy compliance by verifying adherence of underwriting to the Commercial Credit Policy and evaluating any risks associated with non-compliance.
  • Displays deep understanding of the financial regulatory environment as it applies to underwriting most forms of commercial credit transactions.
  • Understand and adhere to the Company’s risk and regulatory standards, policies, and controls.

Company Information

M&T Bank