Is this actually what it is like working.
Hi all,
It's about 3 months into my commercial/corporate banking job. It seems like most of my work is aimed at portfolio management, but I wasn't expecting it to be so process heavy rather than actual analysis. Spending a lot of time moving a ton of data into our system and any analysis kind of rests on pure vibes and that "we need to be competitive since we're trying to grow" sacrificing covenants. Even the worst of our credits given to us by our IB team are almost forced to be approved which they aren't even that stressed, it's just a bad decision all for the sake of staking a relationship.
Let's say that we were doing an analysis we're kind of just stuck following the credit metrics and making sure we're not entering a danger zone so for example if we give them this new RCF, what does their borrowing base look like, would their DSCR / FCC go above threshold values of putting them in danger, what did their average utilization look like, and then its just an optimization problem while also competing against 9 other banks for 100bps ??
Now I will say my wlb is great I'm def less than 35 hours a week not because I'm leaving early solo, but because everyones gone or offline before me! The issue is that I feel like I'm missing something here, I'm keeping my free time preoccupied by reading books, forwarding any news, buildling personal dashboards to build memory on margins, reading credit memos, and practicing LBOs nad Powerpoint (since I haven't even had to open this once in my entire time here).
I'm comped at a good amount relative to wlb. But in the mean time what could I be doing to build that credit acumen or investor mindset. Everything just looks bad, but I don't really know how to assess that risk or understand what's going on motive wise or even news wise no matter how many credit memos / pms I talk to ask them about. It's always been defaulted to long time borrower strong management it's fine. I don't think I could get away with using that as an interview answer.
