Director, Commercial Credit Review

Essential Responsibilities and Duties

• Independent Credit Review Program Design, maintain, and execute an annual risk-based credit review plan covering commercial loans, including CRE and a variety of specialty credits.
• Establish and refresh review scope, sample selection methodology, and coverage thresholds appropriate to a $5–10 billion institution, with documented rationale aligned to the Interagency Guidance on Credit Risk Review Systems.
• Deliver clear, timely, and well-supported written reports to executive management, the CRO, and the Board’s Risk Committee, with actionable findings and tracked management responses.
• Maintain the credit review charter, policies, and procedures, ensuring the function’s independence.
• Lead targeted loan-level reviews assessing underwriting quality, financial analysis, collateral evaluation, structure, documentation, covenant monitoring, and ongoing servicing.
• Evaluate adherence to the Bank’s credit policy, regulatory requirements, and prudent lending standards.
• Identify documentation, exception, and policy-deviation trends and escalate root-cause issues to the CRO, CCO and Board Risk Committee.
• Independently validate the accuracy and consistency of risk ratings (pass and criticized) across the commercial portfolio and assess timeliness of rating changes.
• Assess the calibration and discriminatory power of the Bank’s risk rating framework; recommend enhancements to definitions, factors, and override governance.
• Evaluate the design and operating effectiveness of the Bank’s commercial credit policies, underwriting standards, exception processes, and approval authorities.
• Identify gaps between policy, practice, and regulatory expectations; recommend enhancements to policy, procedure, and training.
• Coordinate with Internal Audit, Compliance, and Loan Operations to ensure issues are identified appropriately and that root causes are addressed.
• Serve as the credit review function’s champion for responsible AI adoption — building the business case, prioritizing high-value use cases, and partnering with stakeholders to pilot and scale solutions.
• Identify candidate use cases such as automated document intake and spreading, covenant and financial-reporting tracking, exception detection, anomaly identification in risk ratings, expanded sampling, and natural-language summarization of credit files.
• Partner with ERM, Information Security, Legal, Compliance, and IT to ensure AI tools are deployed within a robust governance framework consistent with regulatory expectations and industry best practices.
• Establish controls for explainability, human-in-the-loop review, data lineage, bias and drift monitoring, and audit defensibility for any AI tools deployed in credit review.
• Develop metrics that measure the impact of AI on coverage, cycle time, exception identification rates, and finding quality — and share results transparently with the CRO, executive management, and the Board.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, business, economics or related field. Master’s degree preferred.
• CFA, FRM, CPA, CRC or formal credit training preferred.
• 15+ years of progressive commercial banking experience, with at least 7 years in credit review, credit risk, commercial underwriting, special assets, or a combination, including (preferably) time at a bank with similar size, complexity, and regulatory profile.
• Demonstrated mastery of commercial credit analysis, structuring, and risk rating frameworks.
• Experience participating substantively in regulatory examinations and external audits of commercial credit functions.
• Track record of producing clear, evidence-based written reports and presenting to executive management and a Board-level committee.
• Genuine willingness to champion AI and automation in credit review, balanced with an instinct for sound governance, model risk, and audit defensibility.
• Strong leadership, coaching, and people management skills. Independence and intellectual honesty — willing to deliver hard messages with evidence and tact.
• Strategic mindset paired with hands-on attention to detail.
• Strong written and verbal communication, including Board-level presentation skills.
• Curiosity and adaptability — a real interest in how AI and modern tooling can responsibly improve credit risk oversight.