Credit Risk - Executive Director - Credit Decisioning Unit

The Credit Decisioning Unit (CDU) is the first-line credit risk function within the Business Banking Group. The CDU establishes the analytical frameworks, underwriting standards, portfolio risk assessment methodologies, and credit policy infrastructure that govern the Group's lending decisions across its wholesale client base. 

 

We are seeking a Head of Wholesale Credit to lead the CDU's wholesale credit mandate. This is a senior role is designed for a practitioner who can evaluate a complex credit, chair a credit policy working group, and present portfolio risk findings to senior leadership. The position requires fluency across the full credit lifecycle: from individual credit assessment through to framework design and portfolio management.

 

The wholesale credit portfolio encompasses small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with standard C&I loans, not-for-profit organizations (including private schools, social service agencies, healthcare entities, and community development organizations), and small and local government borrowers. This breadth of obligor type requires an individual with intellectual range — capable of applying different analytical lenses to structurally distinct borrower categories without defaulting to a one-size-fits-all underwriting approach.

Job responsibilities

• Provide senior credit judgment on complex, non-standard, and exception-level wholesale credits across SME C&I, not-for-profit, and small government obligor segments.

• Design and own the CDU's wholesale credit underwriting frameworks, including segment-specific policies for SME, C&I, not-for-profit, and small government borrowers — establishing the criteria, analytical tools, and decision standards that govern credit decisions across the broader underwriting team

• Establish and maintain minimum eligibility thresholds and approval standards, determine portfolio concentration limits

• Drive the integration of economic profitability into the credit decisioning framework: ensure that risk appetite, pricing adequacy, and return on regulatory capital are embedded in how the CDU evaluates and recommends credits — not treated as a finance function afterthought

• Own the CDU's approach to related obligor definitions, covenant architecture, and collateral adequacy standards for the wholesale segment

• Lead retrospective portfolio studies and performance analyses to assess whether origination practices are producing the risk-adjusted outcomes the Bank intends — and to identify where underwriting standards require recalibration

• Develop and manage early warning and watchlist frameworks for the wholesale portfolio, with a particular focus on obligor types subject to structural revenue risk (not-for-profit, government-dependent, and campaign-reliant borrowers)

• Represent the CDU's wholesale credit function in senior forums including the Credit Committee, CRO leadership team, and Business Banking Group executive leadership — presenting findings, policy recommendations, and portfolio risk views with credibility and precision

• Build and sustain productive relationships with second-line Risk partners, ensuring that the CDU's first-line credit function constructively engages with second-line reducing friction and enhancing the quality of credit governance

• Partner with Finance, Pricing, and Capital Management to ensure that credit decisions are evaluated through the lens of economic profitability and risk-adjusted return

• Guide CDU credit analysts is data-driven studies to assess Portfolio posture and health and perform ad hoc analyses

 

Required qualifications, capabilities, and skills

 

• Ten+ years of progressive experience in commercial, wholesale, or business banking credit, with demonstrated leadership responsibility for credit decisions, policy development, or portfolio risk management

• Proven ability to underwrite and evaluate complex credits at the individual deal level across multiple obligor types — including detailed financial statement analysis, cash flow assessment, collateral evaluation, and covenant structuring

• Direct experience designing or materially contributing to credit frameworks, underwriting policies, or risk decisioning standards — moving beyond individual deal work to define how a credit function evaluates risk systematically

• Demonstrated experience managing or analytically overseeing a balanced wholesale credit portfolio, with fluency in portfolio-level risk metrics including concentration analysis, default rate analysis, loss forecasting, and risk appetite translation

• Experience with not-for-profit, small government, or mission-driven entity lending — or a demonstrated ability to apply credit discipline to borrower types with non-commercial revenue structures and balance sheet characteristics

• Strong command of economic profitability concepts —risk-adjusted pricing, return on regulatory capital, SVA vs. NPV trade-offs — and the ability to integrate profitability analysis into credit recommendation and portfolio strategy

• Demonstrable track record of engaging constructively with senior management, regulators, or second-line risk functions — presenting credit views with clarity, defending positions under scrutiny, and influencing decisions through analytical credibility rather than positional authority