The deliverance of practical credit skills as well as developing relationship management techniques should form the basis of any commercial bank training programme.
With this in mind, there are always new and innovative ways in which business leaders can improve their training events in order to improve operations and deliver a significant return on investment.
By utilising experiential learning methods, and most notably business simulations, an entire workforce will be given the opportunity to practice their skills and evaluate their performance in a professional yet risk-free environment, thus improving learning retention.
For business leaders to see notable results and improvement in real-time, it is essential to understand precisely what should be replicated in a commercial bank training programme.
What is commercial bank training?
A commercial bank training programme will equip employees in the sector with the skills they need to deliver an effective service to a wide range of clients, all of which have varying needs.
To do this, care must be taken to ensure that the programme is focused on skills that will directly benefit employees, which in turn will directly benefit clients and ensure operations run smoothly. Here at MDA Training, our approach to commercial bank training is centred on two things; credit skills and relationship management.
Credit Skills
Employees in commercial banking must possess an in-depth knowledge of relevant credit skills to manage the affairs of their clients to meet expectations. Failure to do this may result in small businesses or individuals taking their custom elsewhere.
Whether it’s financial analysis, forecasting or writing credit reports, clients will have specific expectations of each employee, and these expectations will need to be met. Before anything else, ensuring that a workforce is qualified and prepared to maintain operations is critical.
Relationship management
While possessing relevant credit skills is vital to be able to flourish in the competitive banking sector, it is also essential to develop reputable relationship management skills in order to deliver the most effective service possible to clients.
If employees are able to communicate effectively, manage meetings and accurately identify customer needs, clients are more likely to feel valued and trust a business to deliver to their expectations on various financial matters.
How can business simulations improve commercial bank training?
Business simulations allow employees to train and develop their skills by mirroring the environment of a real-life situation, giving employees the responsibility to make commercial decisions and later reflect on their performance in a risk-free setting.
In commercial bank training, allowing employees to replicate exactly what they’d do in a client-facing situation not only gives the workforce the tools they need to develop, it also provides business leaders with a clear indication of how well their team is performing and where improvement needs to be made.
When developing the credit skills of employees, our business simulations are integrated as part of our ‘Credit Skills Pathway’, whereby individuals actively analyse financial and non-financial information to deliver on client expectations. Paired with experiential modules and workshops, the simulations allow employees to examine their own performance and see where they could improve in a real situation, thus improving learning retention. For more information on our credit skills pathway, read our presentation here.
With relationship management, our experiential approach focuses on seven fundamental areas that, when perfected, equip employees with the tools they need to maintain client relationships long term. These areas are:
- Effective listening
- Effective questioning
- Managing client meetings
- Communicating effectively
- Customer current needs analysis
- Customer future needs analysis
- Managing relationships strategically
Delivered through a number of mediums, our business simulations place employees in situations where they are actively engaging with a ‘client’, and are required to make informed decisions while managing the relationship in a professional style. The benefit of this is that employees are more likely to draw on their training experiences when approaching real meetings.
To prepare a workforce for the varying demands and expectations of the sector, constructing an efficacious commercial bank training programme will go a long way in maintaining client satisfaction and ensuring business continuity. Allowing employees to actively participate and engage with effective business simulations will allow them to improve long term.