C&I Loan Underwriting
Screen the borrower, read the statements for quality, build the UCA cash flow, prove repayment, and defend the decision in committee.
Full Learning Path · per learner
Cover it with a membership →Path includes
- 9 core courses
- 6 complete case studies
- Hands-on exercises throughout
- Learning checks after every module
- Quizzes after every course
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The content is based on real world experience, and explains things in a way that makes it easy to follow and understand.
Start with the Learning Paths for New Banking Professionals
Two short Foundations learning paths take a new hire from zero to ready for this path: Accounting & Finance Foundations to learn to read a business, then Commercial Lending Fundamentals to learn to think like a lender.
Built for the People Who Work C&I Exposures
First- and second-year credit analysts, relationship managers rotating into credit, underwriters, and loan review, special-assets, and credit administration staff who work C&I exposures. Learners are expected to be familiar with the accrual income statement and balance sheet for a commercial business and the associated terminology; the path builds analytical judgment on top of that foundation rather than re-teaching basic accounting. The learning paths for new banking professionals build exactly that foundation.
By the End of the Core Path
- Screen a prospective borrower on management quality, integrity, and sustainable competitive advantage before committing analytical effort
- Read commercial financial statements for quality and owner-payout distortion, then compute and interpret the key performance ratios
- Build a uniform credit analysis cash flow statement, identify the true borrowing cause, and project the primary source of repayment
- Assess a guarantor’s real liquid support as the secondary source of repayment, and structure covenants that mitigate the risks to every repayment source
- Defend a credit decision in committee using a standard credit memorandum that reduces the analysis to a decisive consideration
- Understand how each form of business organization shapes the financial statements
- Read a guarantor’s personal tax returns line by line to estimate true cash revenue
Specs and Scope
- Format
- 9-course core sequence, self-paced
- Core time
- About 9.4 hours of core content
- Case work
- 5 complete borrower case files: Veldon Industrial Coatings, Inc.; Petrosyan Garden & Outdoor Supply, Inc.; Eldermont Holdings & Investments, Inc.; Kowalczyk Janitorial & Industrial Supply, Inc.; Salgado Commercial Builders
- Method
- Uniform Credit Analysis (UCA) cash flow, taught as a repeatable procedure
- Assessment
- Free 10-question pre-assessment; hands-on exercises throughout
- Credential
- Certificate of Excellence, shareable and verifiable
- Recommended prep
- The learning paths for new banking professionals (Accounting & Finance Foundations for Lenders, then Commercial Lending Fundamentals), or equivalent fluency with accrual statements
Core Courses
The Analytical Decision Tree
The four fundamental issues of every credit decision, the nine-step analytical decision tree, and the soft-data screen that gates the financial work.
Financial Statement Analysis
Reading commercial financial statements for quality and owner-payout distortion, then computing and interpreting the key performance ratios organized around the business drivers, read as trends and against industry peer benchmarks.
Cash Flow: The Borrowing Cause
Constructing and interpreting the uniform credit analysis cash flow statement to convert accrual results into cash and pinpoint the true borrowing cause, including the seasonal cause that lives inside the fiscal year, invisible at year-end.
Borrower Industry Patterns
How the financial statements, business drivers, cash-conversion cycle, and dominant risks differ by business model (manufacturers, distributors, service firms, retailers and restaurants, and contractors) so the analyst reads each borrower through its industry pattern rather than forcing every company through one generic set of expectations. The contractor treatment is the course's center of gravity: revenue recognized over time using a cost-to-cost measure of progress (the method long known as percentage of completion), the work-in-process (WIP) schedule, over- and underbillings, and why standard ratio analysis misleads on a contractor. Consumes the Course 2 drivers and the Course 3 cash-flow discipline; feeds the projection assumptions of Course 5 and the collateral analysis of Course 7. The retail and restaurant pattern is taught from a worked exhibit rather than from a full case.
Projections: The Primary Source of Repayment
Shaping a defensible base-case projection from a management and competitive-forces assessment, stress testing it to judge the primary source of repayment, and testing growth itself: the sustainable growth rate and the external financing need that converts growth into a borrowing cause.
Guarantors: The Secondary Source of Repayment
Assessing a guarantor as the secondary source of repayment by building a personal cash flow statement, measuring true liquid support, and exposing the global-cash-flow trap, then extending the analysis to the related-entity structures through which owner cash actually moves, consolidated into a combined view.
Collateral: The Tertiary Source of Repayment
Valuing and controlling the collateral that stands behind a C&I credit as the tertiary source of repayment: accounts receivable quality, aging, dilution, and ineligibles; inventory composition, valuation, and net orderly liquidation concepts; the borrowing base that converts eligible collateral into governed availability; equipment values; and the field examinations and certificate mechanics that keep the collateral real. This course teaches the analysis of what the collateral is worth and the controls that preserve it; the attachment-versus-perfection distinction is drawn, but lien filing, priority and documentation mechanics are beyond its scope. Where a specific priority conflict is named -- the federal assignment, the warehouseman's lien, the purchase-money interest in inventory -- it is given as a fact credit policy supplies, not as a rule this course teaches.
Red Flags: Mitigating Repayment Risk
Identifying non-financial key risk indicators and tracing their performance impact, then mitigating the risks to all three sources of repayment through well-designed covenants.
The Credit Memorandum
Reassembling the full analysis into a standard credit memorandum that addresses only the four fundamental issues and reduces the decision to a single decisive consideration.
Not just success cases
Each case is a complete borrower file you work through the path, module by module. One more case is held back for the final assessment.
Veldon Industrial Coatings, Inc.
Financial reporting reliability, owner-payout adjustment and business profit, the business drivers and ratios, the UCA cash flow statement and business cash income.
Petrosyan Garden & Outdoor Supply, Inc.
The seasonal borrowing cause and the monthly cash budget, sizing the line to the peak the fiscal-year statement conceals, the cleanup test, receivable ineligibles including a related-party exclusion.
Eldermont Holdings & Investments, Inc.
Financial reporting reliability and method of preparation, profit management key risk indicators, accounting profit versus business profit, related-party and balance-sheet key risk indicators.
Kowalczyk Janitorial & Industrial Supply, Inc.
Financial reporting reliability and key risk indicators, non-financial key risk indicators and tracing their impact, the three sources of repayment, the financing-gap ratio and borrowing base advance rates.
Salgado Commercial Builders
Over-time contract revenue recognition, the two-period work-in-process schedule, profit fade on the largest contract, the overbilling swing that funded operations.
Three Principles, Every Path
Shockproof Learning Paths are designed on these principles, no exceptions.
Real Files, Not Toy Numbers
Every module works from complete borrower packages with statements, notes, and tax returns, the way the file actually arrives.
Method Before Memory
The UCA model and the analytical sequence are taught as one repeatable procedure, then applied across every case until it is reflex.
Decisions, Not Just Analysis
Every case ends in a call: approve, decline, or restructure, with feedback against what an experienced deal team actually did.
Optimized Learning Modules
Every module shares the same structure so learners build a rhythm and retain more.
Narrated Video
An expert walkthrough of the concept in plain English.
Detailed Cases & Exercises
Hands-on with the files your team uses.
Quizzes & Learning Checks
A learning check after every module and a quiz after every course.