Banking Risk Management for Commercial Banks Training Course

Course overview

Commercial banks face risk decisions that cannot be managed through policy documents alone. Credit deterioration, liquidity pressure, interest-rate movements, concentration exposures, operational failures and regulatory capital constraints interact across portfolios and balance sheets. Risk professionals need to translate data into timely limits, early-warning indicators, stress-test results and management actions that withstand challenge from senior management, regulators and internal audit.

This five-day Banking Risk Management for Commercial Banks Training Course builds practical capability across the bank-wide risk framework. Participants examine Basel III capital and liquidity requirements, credit risk rating and expected credit loss concepts, market and interest-rate risk measurement, operational risk controls, liquidity contingency planning and enterprise risk reporting. They learn to construct risk appetite statements, calculate core risk measures, design key risk indicators, interpret stress scenarios, challenge model outputs and connect risk analysis to pricing, provisioning, capital allocation and strategic decisions.

Instructor-led modules are supported by worked banking cases, spreadsheet-based calculations, risk committee simulations and peer review of reporting packs. Participants assess a simulated commercial bank with rising non-performing loans, funding concentration and margin pressure, then prioritise mitigants and escalation actions. Each participant leaves with a practical bank risk-management action pack: a risk appetite and limits template, KRI dashboard design, stress-testing worksheet, risk-and-control assessment and a 90-day implementation plan adaptable to their institution.

The course is designed for intermediate to advanced banking professionals who already work with lending, treasury, finance, compliance, audit or risk data and need a more integrated view of how risks are measured, governed and reported across a commercial bank.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a bank-wide risk appetite statement with measurable limits, triggers and escalation thresholds
• Calculate credit portfolio risk indicators including PD, LGD, EAD, expected credit loss and concentration measures
• Interpret Basel III capital, leverage and liquidity ratios for commercial-bank decision making
• Design key risk indicators and early-warning thresholds for credit, liquidity, market and operational risk
• Run sensitivity and scenario stress tests for loan losses, funding outflows and interest-rate shocks
• Evaluate interest-rate risk in the banking book using repricing-gap and economic-value sensitivity methods
• Prepare a risk committee dashboard that links exposures, limit breaches, root causes and management actions
• Develop a 90-day risk-management improvement plan based on a simulated bank risk assessment

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Bank Risk Managers — who need to integrate credit, liquidity, market and operational risk reporting
• Credit Risk Managers and Portfolio Analysts — who monitor borrower deterioration, provisioning and concentration exposures
• Treasury and ALM Professionals — who manage funding, liquidity buffers and banking-book interest-rate risk
• Finance Managers and Controllers — who connect capital, expected credit loss and profitability decisions
• Internal Auditors and Compliance Managers — who assess risk governance, controls and regulatory evidence
• Relationship Banking and Lending Managers — who need to recognise portfolio risk signals and operate within risk appetite

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have working experience in a commercial bank or a closely related financial-services role and be comfortable reading financial statements, loan portfolio reports and basic balance-sheet information. Familiarity with credit concepts such as probability of default, collateral and non-performing loans is expected, along with basic Excel skills including formulas, filters and charts. Prior exposure to Basel III, IFRS 9 or asset-liability management is useful but not essential. This is not a programming or quantitative-modelling course: advanced statistics, coding, econometrics and prior use of specialist risk systems are not required.

Training methodology

The course combines instructor-led banking risk briefings with spreadsheet calculations, facilitated case analysis and structured risk committee discussions. Participants work with a simulated commercial bank’s loan portfolio, funding profile, capital ratios and operational-loss events. They calculate selected metrics in Microsoft Excel, assess limit breaches, debate management responses and convert findings into board-ready reporting. Small-group workshops compare risk mitigants across credit, treasury and finance perspectives. The final session is an application-planning clinic in which participants tailor their action pack to their own bank’s governance, data and reporting environment.

Course outline

Day 1: Bank-wide risk governance and risk appetite

• Commercial-bank risk taxonomy across credit, market, liquidity, operational and strategic risk
• Three-lines model, board oversight and risk committee accountabilities
• Risk appetite statements, tolerance levels, limits and breach escalation
• Basel III capital framework, capital buffers and leverage ratio
• Risk data aggregation and BCBS 239 reporting principles
• Risk culture indicators and challenge practices in management committees
• Linking risk appetite to business planning, product approval and performance measures

Workshop: Participants build a risk appetite matrix for a simulated bank, defining metrics, limits, triggers, owners and escalation routes.

Day 2: Credit risk, portfolio quality and provisioning

• Credit risk lifecycle from origination standards to workout and recovery
• Borrower rating, scorecards and financial-statement red flags
• Probability of default, loss given default and exposure at default
• IFRS 9 staging and expected credit loss calculation logic
• Portfolio concentration analysis by sector, geography, borrower and collateral type
• Early-warning indicators, watchlists and non-performing loan management
• Credit risk mitigation through collateral, covenants, guarantees and portfolio limits

Workshop: Using a loan portfolio dataset, participants calculate expected credit loss indicators, identify concentrations and prepare a watchlist escalation memo.

Day 3: Liquidity, funding and banking-book interest-rate risk

• Liquidity risk drivers, behavioural assumptions and funding concentration
• Liquidity Coverage Ratio and High-Quality Liquid Assets composition
• Net Stable Funding Ratio and structural funding assessment
• Cash-flow maturity ladders, survival horizons and contingency funding plans
• Interest-rate risk in the banking book and repricing-gap analysis
• Economic value of equity and net interest income sensitivity
• Funds transfer pricing and the relationship between treasury pricing and risk appetite

Workshop: Participants produce a liquidity stress profile and repricing-gap analysis, then recommend funding and balance-sheet actions to an ALCO panel.

Day 4: Market, operational and model risk controls

• Trading-book market risk, value at risk and stressed value at risk concepts
• Sensitivity measures, basis risk and foreign-exchange exposure monitoring
• Operational risk events, risk-and-control self-assessments and loss-event data
• Key risk indicators, control testing and operational risk scenario analysis
• Business continuity, cyber risk and third-party service-provider controls
• Model risk governance, validation, back-testing and model inventory management
• Conduct risk, fraud indicators and issue-management remediation tracking

Workshop: Teams complete a risk-and-control self-assessment for a digital lending process and design KRIs, control tests and remediation actions.

Day 5: Stress testing, capital planning and executive reporting

• Scenario design using macroeconomic, sectoral and idiosyncratic risk drivers
• Credit-loss, liquidity-outflow and interest-rate shock transmission paths
• Reverse stress testing and identification of business-model vulnerabilities
• Capital adequacy assessment and internal capital planning concepts
• Aggregation of risks, correlations and management overlays
• Risk dashboards for executive management, risk committees and boards
• Action tracking, limit-breach reporting and 90-day risk improvement roadmaps

Workshop: Participants present a board-style risk pack and 90-day action plan for the simulated bank, defending priorities under challenge from a mock risk committee.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Basel III, IFRS 9

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions