credit risk review

Credit Risk Review (a/k/a Loan Review): A Value or a Burden?

For over 30 years, the regulators have advocated, or required, an independent validation of credit risk.  There is a good business reason for this function if managed well.  Banks spend a lot of money on CRR and internal audit, and in today’s heavy cost, heavily regulated banking world, you need to get optimum value for every dollar spent.  But is the board getting what it needs from it to influence decision making on strategic direction, personnel management and other key lending components?

 *Are you getting a mixed message from your regulator on CRR?

*Do you view CRR as largely necessary to satisfy Regulators and External Auditors?

*What questions does your board or management team ask about the value added?

*And finally: Is it risk based?

 This article identifies common misconceptions and deficiencies in CRR functions that we’ve evaluated in our roles as former regulators, bankers, or as independent consultants.  These reflections hopefully will assist you to proactively manage your CRR function. We routinely (yes, routinely) see such weak performance of CRR that it provides no reliable validation of loan risk ratings, overall portfolio quality or credit administration.  Following are, by order of impact, major observations: 

 1.      Hiring a CRR vendor to perform the function and failing to adequately police its performance or manage the process.  This is far and away the cause of the biggest loss of value.  It is unwise to hand off planning and execution to a vendor and assume it’s handled well.  Deficiencies include:

o   poorly conceived scope coupled with weak or nonexistent risk-based focus.

o   excessive coverage.  Over time, a paradigm has evolved that more coverage is better, and is favored by the regulators.  This is false, and is causing a huge waste of money.  We now commonly see annual CRR file review coverage of 60-80% of outstandings/commitments.  Moreover, the same borrowers and categories are reviewed year after year. While it looks good to show the board, regulators and auditors, the benefit is illusory and here’s why:

§  We have found that such penetration imbues production pressure on the people performing the file work.  This leads to a rush through files and, sometimes, failure to even discuss the credits with loan officers to assure a sound evaluation of the borrower.  Our tests of this work find shallow analysis, unsupported risk ratings, factual errors in calculations leading to incorrect conclusions, missed documentation defects, poor appraisal reviews and weak collateral analyses; all adding up to unreliable systemic findings on your credit world. 

§  To put into perspective, coverage of 60-80% is typically required only when a bank teeters on failure, and the regulators require this level of penetration to verify the extent of loss exposure in the portfolio.  Conversely, a good risk based approach should not target a coverage ratio, but also should not need to exceed 20-40% per year.  This can vary by year depending on how solid your credit function is based on CRR results. 

o   Conclusion oriented observations get lost in the bulk of the thick binder that is delivered to the board by the vendor after each target.  Further, the vendor report is often full of loan portfolio statistics that simply restate what is already in the routine board reports. You are charged for information you already have.  A board member does not have time to sift through this in search of meaningful conclusions.     

o   Overall conclusions are generic statements that provide little insight on validating the bank’s credit risk management.  Worse, these often provide false comfort to the board.  The author of this article has evaluated CRR in dozens of banks over the past 30 years, often after having identified systemic credit quality, underwriting and administration deficiencies in the subject bank.  In no case did CRR ever identify the systemic problems prior to the regulator doing so.   

2.      Inattentive Board/Audit Committee toward managing the process.  While CRR and Internal Audit are designed to be independent validation tools, it is often clear via discussions with board and audit committee members that they are not focused on where the risk is when providing direction on coverage or reviewing results of work performed.  This is usually due to inadequate training of board or committee members on risk based approaches; leading to inordinate participation by lending executives in administering the process, thus diluting independence. 

3.      Using unqualified or unmotivated personnel to perform in house CRR.  This is usually present when the bank is merely showing the regulators and auditors that it has a CRR.  We sometimes find that they are ‘going through the motions’, and committing many of the shortcomings described above.  The tone from the top does not illuminate the importance of the function.  Without a solid commitment from the top and sound execution, value is tepid or absent.

 At Pactola, we would be happy to meet with you to discuss our observations on how to maximize the value of your CRR.  We also have similar observations on internal audit and are qualified to address that as well.  It is very possible that you could cut the costs of these functions while providing more concise, risk based feedback to the board that feeds into good decision making.

Gary Stoley brings over four decades of experience with commercial, agricultural, syndications, asset based lending, leveraged transactions and retail. He has spent over 33 years with the Office of Comptroller of the Currency and then an additional five as a contractor for that agency. More info can be found at: https://pactola.com/credit-risk-advisory-services

Pactola Launches New Services

Listen up!  Pactola announces new services to support your credit administration functions.  These are Credit Risk Advisory (a/k/a Loan Review) and Contracted Problem Loan Management.  Both of these divisions are staffed with a team of seasoned credit veterans with experience in areas of commercial, agricultural, indirect, home equity, and other types of lending.  We also offer various individual services offered on an ala carte basis. 

One big feature is much of this review work can be completed remotely via our secure portals to transport file information safely. Discussions with officers can be made over the phone or using video chat systems like Teams or Zoom.   In today’s world where we deal with remote work environments and limited visits from outsiders, this feature helps limit face-to-face contact. 

Our Credit Risk Advisory Services is designed to help you evaluate the efficacy of your credit risk management function to ensure that the credit risk review mission is clearly set forth and sets objectives as defined by the Board and management.  Credit risk review function is driven by a sound risk assessment tailored to your institution.  Credit risk is evaluated properly, as defined by policy and scope, while values is added via insight and observations of individual lending credit relationships, sectors, portfolios, collateral, purpose, and economic trends.  Reporting includes findings prioritized based upon risk, root causes of systemic deficiencies, practical solutions to address core problems, management corrective plans, and best practice considerations. 

Ultimately, if you are spending lots of money for a third-party loan review report that just checks the box of an examiner requirement, this process is falling quite short of what a good review process can accomplish.  Our approach is to provide you with a study that shows the strengths and weakness of your credit organization and provide you with a path to improve. 

Contracted Problem Loan Management can provide additional support to your credit team to help manage the upcoming problem loans that we will all see from the impact of the economic downturn and lockdown.  Many institutions do not have a seasoned special asset group internally they can send their problem credits to be managed.  This requires either hiring problem credit managers, which can be expensive.  Existing staff can also manage their problem credits.  The challenge here is so much time will be spent on problems that you will lose good credit opportunities that your competitors will be jumping on. 

Another option is to partner with seasoned credit folks to help manage some of your problem credit accounts.  We have a team of professionals who have experience with managing problem credits that can assist your team, thus saving you time to focus on your good clients while saving you labor cost of additional staff. 

Our Credit Risk Advisory Services are led by Gary Stoley.  Gary spent 33 years as a regulator with the OCC before retiring in 2010.  He has experience with all areas of credit from policy framework to collections.  His experience is in many sectors of lending:  small business, oil and gas, agriculture, C&I, asset based lending, secured financing, A/R lending, factoring, home mortgage, equity, indirect auto, and unsecured personal loans.  You can contact Gary at gary.stoley@pactola.com

Our Contracted Problem Loan Management  is led by Randall Pownell.  Randy has over four decades of experience with commercial and agricultural lending with extensive experience with collections and problem loan management with the Farm Credit Services.  You can contact Randy at randall.pownell@pactola.com