Bissett Insider

MRU FSO and RMA host inaugural RMA Alberta Commercial Lending Case Competition at MRU

On September 27 and 29, the Risk Management Association of Alberta ( “RMA”) and the MRU Financial Students’ Organization (“FSO”) co-hosted the inaugural RMA Alberta Commercial Lending Case Competition on the MRU campus. This competition was modeled after RMA competitions which have been held in the United States.
The event was only open to MRU students.  Thirty two BBA students ( primarily financial analysis and financial services ) signed up and were assigned to 8 teams, each team having an industry mentor (a local commercial lender or banking executive ) who provided each team individualized assistance with their analysis.  the event also included a 75 minute “Commercial Lending 101” seminar, lead by a leading local banker from RBC.
The main portion of the competition had the student teams analyze a provided scenario with both qualitative and quantitative methods to produce a recommendation in an executive summary and commercial lending term sheet.  The mentors provided one hour of limited assistance to their team during the four hours.    Each team then presented their executive summary and term sheet to a panel of judges, over a 10 minute presentation and an 8 minute question and answer period.   The judging panels consisted of local credit risk and banking executives.
The top three teams were:
FIRST: $1400 prize : Team B: Austin Vrabel, Riley McCallum, Connor Nodrick ( 2nd year), Gurdit Khatra
SECOND: $1000 prize: Team E: Sam Lonnberg, Matthew Lonnberg ( 2nd year), Shameel Damji (3rd year), Joseph Neil
THIRD: $600 prize: Team F: Cam Devlin, Ahsan Khan, James Carlson, Enma Calderon ( 2nd year)
The RMA raised funds from several local financial institutions to cover the $3000 prize pool, exceeding expectations!
“Our students were outstanding ambassadors of our program.  Our RMA partners, the judges and the mentors spoke with me throughout the two days of the event and said glowing things about our students: the quality of the analysis, their eagerness to learn and their professionalism were all noted.  In total, 17 corporate-commercial bankers and credit risk professionals came to our campus and worked with our students in some capacity over the two days of the event”  — Catherine Roy-Heaton.
Catherine would like to thank all the industry partners, volunteers and students who made the event the success it was. Special Thanks to Catherine for her continued mentor-ship of the Finance students and the MRU FSO.