Credit Analysis and Commercial Lending: Read a Borrower Like a Banker
Signature Course No. 465 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Credit Analysis and Commercial Lending: Read a Borrower Like a Banker course, in the Sales, Service & Revenue category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
A loan is repaid by a business, in cash, on a schedule — or it is not repaid at all. A commercial loan is a promise tested by time, and credit analysis is the discipline of testing the promise before the money leaves: where repayment will actually come from, what stands behind it if the first source falters, how the loan is built so repayment matches the borrower's real cycle, and how anyone will prove, a year later, that the decision was sound on the day it was made. The running seat throughout is Brannock Bank, a fictional commercial bank whose credit policy supplies the floors, advance rates, and watch levels the course works with.
It starts with the credit question. Every analysis in this course answers one question in three parts: what repays this loan if the plan works, what repays it if the plan slips, and what repays it if the borrower fails? You will learn to state the purpose before the sources, test the primary source in cash rather than in profit, and grade each source separately — because collateral grades the size of a loss, never the likelihood of repayment.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — Grade the Borrower — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Underwriting Recommendation; then, Module 2 — Structure, Protect, and Watch the Loan — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Renewal You Can Defend.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a complete underwriting recommendation on a packaging distributor's $750,000 request: the framing by purpose and ordered sources, the business and global coverage built from components, the character, capital, and conditions findings, the net tertiary coverage, the defended grade, and the credit memo's central paragraph; and a structure, protection, and monitoring plan for a safety-equipment distributor's renewal: the rebuilt term structure, the recomputed borrowing base, the rewritten covenant package, the cured file, the pricing ruled against its hurdle, and the grade and monitoring plan defended at portfolio level.
The honesty standard is part of the course. This course is not legal advice, not an examination manual, and not a promise of any outcome: it promises working capability — that a learner who finishes it can frame a request, test a borrower, structure a loan, and defend the decision in writing. It does not promise a job, a promotion, an approval, or a portfolio result. Where Brannock Bank's policy supplies a number — a coverage floor, an advance rate — it is one bank's stated choice that teaches the shape of the judgment, not a universal standard; every worked figure in the course, meanwhile, closes, and you are invited to check the arithmetic with a pencil.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Credit Analysis and Commercial Lending: Read a Borrower Like a Banker is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning delivers.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
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Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with the credit question. State the purpose of the most recent credit request you saw or made in one specific sentence — not its category; name its primary, secondary, and tertiary sources of repayment in order, and say which of the three the discussion actually spent its time on; recall a decision justified mainly by what could be sold if it failed, and the question that should have been asked first. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Underwriting Recommendation for Module 1 and The Renewal You Can Defend for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Repayment first, always. No loan in this course is made good by its collateral, its guarantor, or its pricing. The primary source of repayment — cash the borrower's own operations produce — decides. Everything else is graded honestly as what it is: a second way out, a support, or a price for risk, never a substitute for the first way out working.
Module 1 grades the borrower. The Credit Question; Character; Capacity; Global Cash Flow; Capital; Collateral; Conditions; Purpose and Fit; and Risk Rating — the five Cs worked as tests with evidence, cash-flow analysis aimed at one target, repayment, and a risk grade assigned before anyone in the room falls in love with the deal.
Module 2 structures, protects, and watches the loan. Structure; Covenants; The Borrowing Base; Guarantees and Support; Documentation and Approval; Pricing and Profitability; Monitoring; Portfolio Thinking; and The Banker's Standard — a structure matched to the asset and the cycle, covenants that monitor something real, and the file itself as the proof of the decision.
And it holds its seat throughout. This course sits in the underwriting seat, and it never leaves it: statement literacy is incoming, not taught — reading statements and computing standard ratios is the ground the neighboring financial statement courses build. What this course teaches is what a banker does with statements: which figures become cash available for debt service, how a borrower's cycle turns paper profit into collected cash or fails to, and what to require when the statements in front of you are too weak, too old, or too optimistic to decide on.
What you will learn
- Frame any credit request by its purpose and its primary, secondary, and tertiary sources of repayment — and refuse to decide until the primary source is proven
- Test character, capital, and conditions with evidence: payment history and candor, the equity cushion and leverage, and the industry and cycle the borrower must survive
- Build repayment cash-flow analysis — cash available for debt service, debt service coverage, and the global cash flow that counts every claim on the borrower and the owner
- Value collateral at liquidation-minded values, set advance rates, and run a borrowing base on receivables and inventory in motion
- Structure a loan to fit the borrower's cycle — amount, tenor, amortization, and repayment design — and write covenants that monitor something real and report while action still helps
- Judge guarantees and outside support for collectible worth, document and price the credit, and run an approval whose file proves the decision
- Monitor booked loans for early warning, grade risk honestly, and think in portfolios — concentrations, migration, and the discipline of the watch list
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Credit Analysis and Commercial Lending: Read a Borrower Like a Banker, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Underwriting Recommendation and The Renewal You Can Defend
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the people who make and defend credit decisions
Commercial lenders and relationship managers — who originate requests and must learn to see their own deals the way credit will see them, before the memo is written; and credit analysts and underwriters who build the analysis, recommend structure, and need judgment that goes past the spreadsheet to the borrower behind it.
Loan reviewers, credit administrators, and portfolio managers — who grade, monitor, and challenge loans after booking, and who inherit whatever the original analysis missed; and small-business and community-bank lenders who often carry the whole discipline in one seat.
Business bankers moving into commercial credit — who know customers well and want the analytical structure that turns customer knowledge into defensible credit decisions. This course assumes you can read financial statements and compute standard ratios; it assumes no prior underwriting experience and no particular bank's policy.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Credit Question
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Credit Analysis and Commercial Lending: Read a Borrower Like a Banker is Signature Course No. 465. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.