Instructor Profile

Discover new techniques to assess borrowers. Analyze pandemic-era results with more certainty.

Thanks to the pandemic, assessing the operating performance of borrowers has become more challenging than ever. With government subsidy programs and non-standard business practices throwing a spanner in the works, the results have become skewed, making it hard for financial institutions to know whether borrowers will generate enough cash flow to repay loans in the long run.

In this webinar, financial institution risk expert Dev Strischek will help you glean information from income statements to evaluate operating performance. You will learn how to assess pandemic-era results.

One of the most basic analytical and underwriting tools a banker must have is the ability to determine whether a borrower can repay their loans based on the financial information available.

Financial organizations extend credit to borrowers when the borrowers show the ability to repay the loans extended. Ideally, a request for a five-year loan should be supported by a 5-year cash flow projection. 

This webinar will help attendees learn key assumptions in a projection and how to assess the validity of a downside-most likely projection to stress test the assumptions.

Asset-based lending (often referred to as "ABL") is a form of commercial lending designed to finance safely the working capital needs of a borrower whose cash flow currently may not support debt repayment. Like other commercial loans, cash flow is the primary repayment source for an asset-based loan but with a stronger reliance on the company's assets as collateral and firmer control over the receipts of the collateral's liquidation.

The collateral is typically available to secure the asset-based loan including accounts receivable, inventory, machinery and equipment, general and specific intangibles, real estate, and other assets. Because working capital support is the primary objective of most asset-based loan facilities, accounts receivable and inventory generally are the bank's core collateral. Personal guarantees, often secured, can be taken.

We tend to take accounting for granted—debits equal credits, total assets equal total liabilities and stockholder’s equity. Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) are generally accepted because they do not change often, and when they do, there are good reasons for the change.

However, business and the economy do change over time, and several new principles warrant review to understand how they will affect both borrowers and lenders--new GAAP for revenue recognition, lease capitalization, current expected credit losses (CECL) as well as changes to not-for-profit financials.

This webinar session by Dev Strischek is intended to provide guidance on how to develop and maintain a Credit Administration (CA) function that will provide guidance to anyone involved in the credit function of the bank. The session also highlights the safeguards to manage the bank’s loan portfolio in a safe and sound manner.

CA supports credit risk management by watching over credit policy, credit analysis and underwriting, credit approval, credit extension, loan administration, and portfolio management. It also includes ensuring that credit policy exceptions and loan documentation exceptions are mitigated, that credit files and loan documentation are secure.

In today’s world of evolving technologies and businesses, financial organizations are taking on increasing levels of risk. This initiative has increased the need to employ appropriate Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) strategies, policies, and processes in order to identify, monitor, and manage risk at the proper levels. In a world of do more at a faster pace, it is important for companies to manage their activities in a manner that can allow them to align risk strategies with overall risk management and internal control activities. Inability to do this may put the company at risk for not being able to meet strategic objectives.

The Five Cs of Commercial Credit is a framework used by lenders to assess the creditworthiness of businesses. By understanding the Five Cs of Commercial Credit, bankers can assess the risk associated with lending to a particular borrower and make informed lending decisions. This helps banks to manage their risk exposure and ensure that they are lending responsibly. 

Moreover, by evaluating each of the Five Cs, bankers can provide valuable advice to borrowers on how to improve their creditworthiness. This can help borrowers to secure financing in the future and build a strong financial foundation for their business.

Bankers have relied on the 5 C's of credit - Capacity, Conditions, Collateral, Capital, and Character for many years, but what do these terms really mean, and how do lenders use them to determine whether a potential borrower is creditworthy? 

This simple credit model is simple to understand and easy to use. The speaker explains how lenders assess each of these factors and provides practical tips for borrowers to improve their creditworthiness. Attend the session to see the big picture for credit analysis and underwriting.

First, good leaders walk the talk, but they also “write right”. They know how to say in a few words what needs to be said in crisp, clear language. The road to bad communication is paved with good intentions but poor construction. Readers know when subjects and verbs don’t agree, when punctuation misses the point, when words don’t fit, and content is confusing. In this session, learn how a few basic rules on grammar, punctuation, and usage can improve business written communications with clearer, more succinct content. Business writing is best when it is spare and clear, precise and concise. This session is designed to give practical and useful advice and tips on how to tighten up language and organize the content into a logical, convincing read. Attendees don’t have to be English majors or literature students. The aim is to improve the readability of your written words.

Second, Emails are a core business communication tool. The speed and volume of email have dramatically changed the business communication. The not-so-old standards for professional correspondence have changed and will continue to do so. Employees need to know the best strategies to communicate effectively. An effective business email is easily understood, but it is not so easily written. We have all received poorly written emails. These emails are unclear, ambiguous and often get ignored. They can cause confusion. They can also be detrimental to business if projects are impeded or if clients misinterpret information. Fortunately, this communication skill can be Improved with training, and the payoff is that these clearer emails improve business communication and productivity. 

This course will teach you how to write clearer emails to receive better responses. Well-written emails save time because they allow the recipient to clearly understand the task at hand and respond appropriately and promptly. Effective emails reduce confusion and improve productivity, and they are much faster to write than snail mail. This course will teach you the basics of effective email communication.

EBITDA is not cash flow and it can be misleading and costly to the lender in certain credit decisions. 

The challenge here is to explain what we mean when we say cash flow. In recent decades bankers have seen several top contenders for the cash flow definitional sweepstakes—traditional cash flow, operating cash flow, and EBITDA. The ascendant definition has been EBITDA, largely because of its popularity with the investment community, and its use there has given it a certain cache among corporate bankers and commercial lenders.

EBITDA is a popular measure of cash flow, but it is not accurate, and bankers and investors who rely on it as a reliable indicator of repayment ability will be deeply disappointed. The lender needs to understand those fatal flaws so that they do not jeopardize the repayment of what otherwise appears to be a strong credit.

The session includes several examples and a case study to illustrate:

• Why EBITDA is flawed and how to apply better cash flow tools that actually measure repayment ability from cash flow.
• Discover the alternatives to EBITDA including: Operating Cash Flow, Net Cash after Operation, Net Cash Income, Cash after Debt Amortization and Free Cash Flow.

Bankers have relied on the 5 C's of credit - capacity, conditions, collateral, capital, and character for many years, but what do these terms really mean, and how do lenders use them to determine whether a potential borrower is creditworthy? 

This simple credit model is simple to understand and easy to use. Attend the session to C the big picture for credit analysis and underwriting.

Good leaders walk the talk, but they also “write right”. They know how to say in a few words what needs to be said in crisp, clear language. The road to bad communication is paved with good intentions but poor construction. Readers know when subjects and verbs don’t agree, when punctuation misses the point, when words don’t fit, and content is confusing. In this session, learn how a few basic rules on grammar, punctuation, and usage can improve business written communications with clearer, more succinct content.

Business writing is best when it is spare and clear, precise and concise. This session is designed to give practical and useful advice and tips on how to tighten up language and organize the content into a logical, convincing read. Attendees don’t have to be English majors or literature students. The aim is to improve the readability of your written words.