Specialty Lending Credit Officer

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.

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.

• 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.
• Pa…