Comprehensive Case Assessment

Business Issue - Ensuring effective, consistent commercial credit analysis and decision-making is now more critical than ever. Even the most experienced and best-trained commercial lenders need to apply both quantitative analytical tools and interpretive judgment to evaluate risk and articulate credit decisions. Financial institutions will achieve safety, soundness and success by ensuring that lenders perform more than a series of analytical tasks and are able to integrate and synthesize their analysis of commercial credit opportunities.

Omega Performance’s Solution - The Comprehensive Case Assessment is realistic, competency-based diagnostic that measures a lender’s ability to apply analytical tools and techniques and to articulate an accurate and logical synthesis of a commercial credit decision. The Comprehensive Case Assessment consists of a series of short-answer, essay-type questions that are based on a single, realistic case study, designed to evaluate a lender’s complete analysis and decision-making skills for a commercial lending opportunity. The assessment is designed to test both skill in performing specific tasks and integrating this analysis into a series of clearly articulated decisions.

The Comprehensive Case Assessment can be used as either a pre-training diagnostic or a post-training evaluation. If using the assessment as a pretest, organizations will benefit from benchmarking participants who have had credit training or are experienced analysts or lenders.

What Is Included

The Comprehensive Case Assessment evaluates skills and concepts covered in Omega’s Commercial Loans to Business and Omega+ Commercial Lending programs and the individual tasks contained within them. The assessment is organized around the modular structure of these programs so that the analysis applicable to each module or decision point can be tested and evaluated separately, if required.

The eight modules or decision points cover:

Opportunity Assessment/Preliminary Assessment
Borrowing Causes
Industry Risk Analysis
Business Risk Analysis
Financial Statement Analysis
Cash Flow Analysis
Projections
Loan Structuring

Participants receive a casebook that contains the comprehensive case study on which the assessment is based and an answer sheet.

Results You Can Expect

The Comprehensive Case Assessment helps you to:

Confirm that lenders are proficient in critical analytical techniques
Evaluate lenders' ability to synthesize the tasks of a commercial credit analysis and articulate appropriate conclusions
Conduct a comprehensive credit skills assessment that examines lenders' justification for analytical conclusions
Manage risk by achieving a high level of lending competency
Immediately pinpoint areas for personal skill development
Highlight key development areas for new hires or internal transfers to the credit function

Completed answer sheets are read and graded by either an Omega Performance consultant or by a designated subject matter expert at the client organization. A detailed explanation of correct answers and recommended scoring is included in the Administrator Guide and Answer Key.

Delivery Options

The Comprehensive Case Assessment is designed to be completed by an average participant within three hours. The assessment is designed for flexible delivery and can include the following options:

Single-session, controlled environment
Independent supervised activity
Independent "honor system" activity
Team activity
Modular assessment

The implementation approach selected will depend on the objectives and culture of the organization.