Credit Monitoring and Control in Times of Uncertainties
Course Information
Course Introduction
You take very good care of your fixed assets, machineries and vehicles for example, to ensure that they are in good condition. But, what about your receivables? Do you take as much care of them to ensure that they remain viable assets of the company?
The profits of a company are made not just from sales. Profits come also from the ability to minimize costs and prevent unnecessary losses, such as bad debts written off. Ironically, it can happen that the more a company sells, the less it makes. This will happen, for example, when the salespeople become very lenient and too generous in extending credit to new buyers to increase sales so as to enhance their commission earnings. And the result? An abnormally high level of bad debts later on.
Preventing losses arising from bad debts begins with ensuring credit is extended only to those who deserve it. Doing just this is, however, not quite enough. Credit once extended must also be well managed to ensure that the accounts do not deteriorate in quality, and if they do, to take early remedial actions.
Prevention is always better than cure. Take action early to minimize losses arising from defaulting customers.
Learning Outcome
- Be able to supervise / monitor accounts of customers, to prevent them from becoming bad
- Be able to follow up on and recover problem accounts ore systematically
Course Outlines
Topic 1: The Credit Management Process – what and where can it go wrong
Topic 2: Supervision, monitoring and follow-up why? – what is involved
Topic 3: Classifying problem accounts
Topic 4: Causes of problem accounts
Topic 5: Causes of business failures
Topic 6: Recognizing problem accounts and their causes early
Topic 7: Monitoring adverse environmental and market changes
Topic 8: Taking action early
Topic 9: Keeping in touch with customers - what to look out for
Topic 10: Understanding your customer’s behavior
Topic 11: Some effective collection tools and techniques
Topic 12: When to reorganize, recapitalize, refinance and restructure
Topic 14: Following up on problem accounts – drawing up an action plan
Trainer's Profile
Ms. Koh Siew Min
Koh Siew Min leads a team in providing financial consultancy and training to banks, MNCs and management institutes in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition to possessing a degree in Accountancy from the National University of Singapore, Siew Min is also a qualified Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA, USA). She taught Corporate Finance as well as Bank Financial Management for the Master in Financial Management by University of London (“UOL”). She has also been teaching banking and finance courses for the UOL at the Singapore Institute of Management since 1995 (teaching Financial Management/Corporate Finance, Principles of Banking, International Financial Management). These courses cover treasury risk management, corporate risk management and use of derivatives. She was in the adjunct faculty with the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (teaching Commercial Bank Management, Corporate Finance, Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management etc). She also teaches Commercial Bank Management and Credit Lending Decision for the University of Canberra. In the above capacities, she teaches subjects covering retail and corporate bank management, loan packaging and monitoring, credit evaluation, investment analysis and corporate finance, analysis of financial statements and international financial management, amongst others.
Her broad exposure in the banking sector involved working with bank branch network and top executives of client organisations across a variety of industries. Her areas of specialisation covers retail banking, investment analysis and portfolio management, financial management and credit management.
Siew Min has delivered trainings to large organisations : Keppel Land Ltd, KPMG, Hewlett – Packard, Intel, BPP Asia, Ministry of Finance, Accountant General Dept, MINDEF, SingTel, Motorola, Institute of Banking and Finance, Premas International, Chartered Semiconductors, Courts, Nomura Singapore Limited, Thai Village Holding Ltd, Flextech Holding Ltd, Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore (ICPAS), Citibank, Institute Bank- Bank Malaysia, Bank of China, OCBC Bank, Southern Bank, Bank Mandiri and Standard Chartered Bank (Jakarta). Siew Min is bilingual in English and Chinese and she conducts programs in Mandarin for China participants in a variety of banking subjects. She brings to her training programs a unique blend of academia and practical industry experience in banking and finance gleaned from years of research, teaching and business management in the sector.