Specialty Lending Credit Officer

Cogent Bank; Orlando (FL); Presencial; USD 120.000 - 190.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

Cogent Bank in Orlando seeks a Credit Officer for its Specialty Lending team. You will evaluate highly structured transactions, partner with MDs, RMs, and operations, and help shape credit structures from underwriting through funding.

You will analyze complex collateral, sponsor equity, intercreditor issues, and cash flow, guiding decisions with disciplined risk management and client-focused execution.

Formación

• Significant commercial credit underwriting experience, especially middle-market or specialty lending.
• Strong ability to analyze financial statements, cash flows, leverage, and collateral.
• Experience evaluating complex capital structures and intercreditor arrangements.
• Ability to create concise, decision-ready credit presentations for leadership.
• Comfort collaborating across Credit, Relationship Management, and Operations.

Responsabilidades

• Underwrite new specialty lending opportunities across asset-based, recurring revenue, acquisition, and other structures.
• Analyze historical and projected performance, liquidity, coverage, and enterprise risk.
• Develop credit structures, facilities, covenants, and mitigants; propose appropriate sizes.
• Prepare and present credit requests; defend recommendations to senior leadership and committees.
• Collaborate with relationship managers; participate in transaction execution from screening to funding.
• Monitor portfolio performance and identify emerging liquidity or collateral issues.
• Assist with amendments, restructurings, and portfolio reviews; contribute to underwriting standards improvements.

Educación

Bachelor’s degree in Finance/Accounting/Economics

Commercial underwriting experience

Financial statement analysis

Debt service and cash flow analysis

Collateral evaluation

Structured finance knowledge

Descripción del empleo

Cogent Bank is a relationship-focused commercial bank known for providing creative, responsive financing solutions to businesses throughout Florida and across the country.

Within Cogent Bank, the Specialty Lending team operates as a highly specialized commercial lending group focused on complex, non-traditional credit opportunities that often require more creativity, speed, and structuring expertise than conventional commercial banking. The group provides senior secured financing to privately held and sponsor-backed businesses through asset-based lending, recurring revenue facilities, acquisition and leveraged finance, lender finance, equipment finance, bridge facilities, and other structured credit solutions.

Our transactions generally range from $1 million to $25 million and span a wide variety of industries, collateral types, and transaction structures. The team works closely across business development, credit, and operations from initial opportunity through underwriting, closing, and ongoing portfolio management.

We are a small, experienced team with a significant national portfolio. That means every team member matters. We value sound judgment, intellectual curiosity, accountability, responsiveness, and the ability to find thoughtful solutions without compromising credit discipline.

Role Description

The Specialty Lending Credit Officer is a full-time, on-site position based in the Greater Orlando area and will be a key member of Cogent Bank’s Specialty Lending team.

This is not a traditional commercial credit role focused primarily on standardized underwriting or annual renewals. The Credit Officer will evaluate complex and often highly structured transactions involving businesses with unique capital structures, collateral profiles, cash flow characteristics, acquisition strategies, or financing needs.

The Credit Officer will partner directly with the Managing Director, relationship managers, operations team, senior credit leadership, outside counsel, and other internal partners throughout the life cycle of a transaction.

Responsibilities include analyzing new lending opportunities, developing appropriate credit structures, preparing and presenting credit approval requests, supporting transaction execution, and providing ongoing oversight of the Specialty Lending portfolio.

The successful candidate will be expected to understand not only whether a transaction works, but why it works, where it can break, and how the Bank should structure around those risks.

Key Responsibilities

• Underwrite new Specialty Lending opportunities, including asset-based, recurring revenue, acquisition, leveraged, equipment, lender finance, bridge, and other structured senior secured transactions.
• Analyze historical and projected financial performance, cash flow, leverage, liquidity, debt service capacity, working capital, collateral coverage, borrowing bases, and enterprise risk.
• Evaluate complex capital structures, including sponsor equity, seller financing, earn-outs, subordinated debt, intercreditor arrangements, and acquisition financing.
• Develop thoughtful credit structures and recommend appropriate facility size, advance rates, amortization, covenants, reporting requirements, collateral controls, guarantees, and other risk mitigants.
• Prepare concise, decision-oriented credit presentations that clearly identify the transaction, key risks, mitigants, structure, and rationale for approval.
• Present and defend credit recommendations to senior credit leadership and loan committees.
• Work collaboratively with relationship managers rather than functioning solely as a back-office approval resource. Credit and business development are expected to solve problems together while maintaining appropriate credit discipline.
• Participate in transaction execution from initial screening through approval, documentation, closing, and funding.
• Monitor portfolio performance and proactively identify changes in liquidity, leverage, collateral performance, financial results, or other emerging risks.
• Assist with amendments, renewals, waivers, restructurings, field examinations, collateral reviews, and other portfolio matters.
• Help continuously improve the Specialty Lending group’s underwriting standards, processes, reporting, and credit structures as the platform grows.

Qualifications

• Significant commercial credit underwriting experience, preferably involving middle-market, asset-based, leveraged, acquisition, structured finance, or other specialty lending transactions.
• Strong command of financial statement analysis, cash flow modeling, leverage and debt service analysis, liquidity assessment, and collateral evaluation.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze transactions that do not fit neatly into a conventional commercial lending template.
• Strong understanding of senior secured lending, collateral perfection, borrowing-base structures, covenants, guarantees, intercreditor considerations, and credit documentation.
• Ability to distinguish between risks that should cause the Bank to decline a transaction and risks that can be appropriately mitigated through structure.
• Excellent written communication skills with the ability to turn complex transactions into clear, concise, decision-ready credit presentations.
• Confidence presenting recommendations, asking difficult questions, and constructively challenging assumptions.
• Strong judgment and the ability to balance prudent credit discipline with commercial practicality.
• Ability to manage multiple active transactions in a fast-moving environment without sacrificing accuracy or responsiveness.
• Collaborative working style and willingness to operate as part of a small team where responsibilities may extend beyond a traditional credit job description.
• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business, or a related discipline.
• Formal bank credit training or comparable commercial underwriting experience strongly preferred.

What Success Looks Like

The right person for this role is not simply a strong analyst. We are looking for a credit professional who thinks like a lender.

You should be comfortable with complexity, willing to challenge a transaction when necessary, and equally willing to help determine how a good opportunity can be structured safely. You should be able to move quickly without becoming careless, communicate directly without creating unnecessary bureaucracy, and understand that protecting the Bank and supporting responsible growth are not competing objectives.

Our team has built its reputation on responsiveness, creativity, execution, and disciplined lending. The Credit Officer will play an important role in helping us continue to scale that platform while maintaining the credit standards that made the growth possible.