The relationship manager: growth inside the risk appetite
Your targets are revenue and share of wallet, and the book you grow is the book you will be judged on in three years.
The job
You carry the larger files: mid-market borrowers, multi-product relationships, the deals an account manager refers up. You run the client meetings, quarterback the treasury and leasing specialists, and sponsor the credit request through committee. Growth and credit quality are the same job — a deal that performs badly was a bad deal on the day you priced it.
What lands on the desk
- The relationship plan
- Per client: what the borrower needs next, what the bank wants next, and the order the two asks should come in.
- The sponsor memo
- You write the request that goes to adjudication. If the analyst finds holes, they are holes in your story.
- The client meeting
- Quarterly visits and the call after a bad quarter. TT-07 exists because this conversation is where most credit information actually arrives.
- The book review
- Your portfolio, sliced by rating, sector and exception. The number that matters is the migration, not the size.
What this role decides
- Which opportunities deserve a file — and which the client should not be offered at all.
- Which of the client’s asks become credit requests, and which get answered another way.
- When a familiar borrower asks for terms the numbers no longer support.
Training that fits
- PW-4 into level 3
- The step from writing files to carrying relationships: sector lenses, acquisition financing, the advanced cases.
- CA-207
- The credit conversation with the entrepreneur — the meeting is a credit instrument, not a sales ritual.
- TT-01 and TT-07
- Discovery guide for new relationships, difficult-conversation guide for the ones already in trouble.
What is missing today
Level 3 modules exist as specifications. A relationship manager can read the pathway but not take it.