VP/Director, Underwriting, Real Estate Finance (LA)

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:  Forbright is a nationwide full-service bank and commercial lender focused on helping to build a brighter future for our clients and the communities we serve. Forbright is committed to exceptional client service by providing seamless, innovative personal banking services to depositors and creative financing solutions to visionary middle market businesses and investors in healthcare, technology, financial services, real estate, and other industries. 
COMPANY CULTURE:  We are a dynamic, high energy, fun, and fast-paced organization that has an exciting growth trajectory, meaningful mission, and embedded responsible practices into our daily interactions. We offer our team members a culture of collaboration, inclusion, flexibility, recognition, and giving back. We look to hire individuals that are passionate about our mission, and who are motivated, customer and results-oriented, innovative, adaptable, and thoughtful.
COMPANY MISSION:  We are a mission-driven institution. We operate a sound dynamic institution that is well capitalized, liquid, profitable and uses best practices to manage risk and assure compliance with laws and regulations. We use Forbright’s capital, capabilities, innovation, and expertise to help our clients succeed and contribute broadly to building a brighter future.
JOB SUMMARY: The VP/Director, Underwriting, Real Estate Finance, underwrites and execute all new loan opportunities within a high-volume lending environment. This position screens, underwrites, and structures new loan opportunities, creates credit memos, manages the loan closing process, and works with asset management on portfolio post-closing.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Assist in all aspects of origination activity leading to the closing of new transactions
• Evaluate financing requests to determine credit quality of opportunities and appropriate loan structures
• Conduct diligence and underwriting on new loan opportunities, ensuring that the loan/facility meets the Bank’s credit policy/guideline
• Ensure business terms and structure are accurately captured in loan structure and documentation: Legal documentation for loans including participation agreements, loan agreements, and ancillary legal docs; Varying loan structures and related inter-creditor issues; Different commercial real estate product types
• Identify specific merits, risks, and mitigates for each transaction
• Ensure loan documentation and credit files are timely updated and maintained in the Bank’s internal document retention system in compliance with internal procedures and banking guidelines
• Facilitate loan closings ensuring that legal documentation, 3rd parties/due diligence, and internal processing requirements are completed and processed per credit policy
• Work directly with the prospective borrower to gather information and diligence materials, while maintaining strong working relationships with the key contacts
• Maintain detailed financial models and develop sensitivity analyses
• Perform market, industry, and sponsor due diligence
• Collaborate with Portfolio Management on modifications, extensions, risk ratings, and other asset management issues
• Perform other duties as assigned

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Supervise assigned employees by organizing and monitoring work progress
• Maintain staff by recruiting, selecting, orienting, and training employees
• Manage performance of employees through development, coaching, and counseling

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s Degree required
• 7+ years of experience in underwriting and managing credit risk within Commercial Real Estate and/or Lending required
• Highly motivated business professional, able to thrive in small-team environment
• Extensive knowledge of Excel, Argus, CoStar, and REIS
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Outstanding organizational, problem-solving, and time management skills

The pay range for this position is below. The specific rate will depend on the successful candidate’s qualifications and prior experience. A minimum of $150,000, negotiable with higher experience.

POSITION REQUIREMENTS: We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace where all employees are capable of performing their job position. Work is primarily conducted in an office setting while certain positions may allow for remote work through the use of technology at management discretion. The functions described below are representative of those to successfully perform duties of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable employees to perform the essential functions. While performing duties of this job, the employee may be regularly required for extended periods of time to:• Remain in a sta