With economic times as they are, can you and your organization afford to miss an opportunity to strengthen your skills and sharpen your senses in Credit Management? Can one mistake or one step not taken cost your employer to lose huge amount of money and confidence in you?

Managing, controlling and observing to get paid for business credit starts with laying a strong foundation of knowledge - the principles of credit management. That’s exactly what the student of Postgraduate School of Credit and Financial Management learn to do. At the New Committee Rooms of the Conference Centre of University of Lagos, PSCFM students enjoy the hospitality of PSCFM staff, meet many credit executives from various industries and also have the opportunity to learn about PSCFM’s operations and services during our once in a month Saturday lecture for one year.

The PSCFM’s student class assesses the students’ capacity to learn from the credit management character of Dr. Chris Onalo, FICA, an instructor extraordinaire, a.k.a Mr. Credit. Onalo’s capital strength in credit management may be the ease with which he teaches, urging his class to get the most out of their Credit Management learning experience.

The teaching of advanced Issues in Credit Management at PSCFM suggests things students should keep in mind while investigating the creditworthiness of potential customers, and also some issues which delve into the motivation and reasons some credit granting organizations should resort to professional credit management techniques.

In today’s business credit market, credit executives and credit professionals are shouldering a growing list of responsibilities as department head-counts are shrinking and role lines are blurring. The need for a diverse and complete arsenal of credit management skills is required of today’s credit managers and their executives. At the same time, companies need to ensure that their credit staff can meet future challenges so that they can move forward profitably.

The Postgraduate School of Credit and Financial Management (PSCFM) is already here for both today and future credit managers, producing a multi-skilled people to perform a diverse number of credit management functions for the economy.

Over the last 14 years, PSCFM has established itself as a specialist education institution for credit professionals and their executives at a time (and till this day) when no universities and polytechnics have launched credit management programmes in the country. The Postgraduate School of Credit and Financial Management (PSCFM) has paved the way for advanced-level credit management executive education, built on the foundation of expertise and the desire to meet the ever-changing demands placed on credit and financial professionals.

No doubt, the PSCFM has set the educational standard for credit management in today’s history. The end result is that the PSCFM credit management qualification opens doors for credit professionals where none may have existed.

The work and learn PSCFM credit management courses are for those professionals recognized by their employers as having promise and who are serious about moving beyond current skill levels. The 16-months programme is intensive, keeping credit executives busy with their study packs and attending once in a month Saturday lectures at the Conference Centre of the University of Lagos.

The monthly weekend classes, seminars and course assignments leaves little time for anything else. But the result is that credit professionals depart better prepared for a myriad of challenges that they will likely face. These are benefits that work in favour of both the credit professionals and their organizations.

The class sessions which look at credit and financial reporting and analysis presented by the PSCFM credit management icons go beyond the foundation level to probe key concepts and assumptions underlying the preparation of financial statements. Measurements like economic value added and earnings before interest expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortization are used as students delve deep into income statement structure and financial statement analysis. There is also a hefty amount of time spent in cash flow analysis. PSCFM credit management lecturers do not take lightly their goals to imbue credit executives with the analytical mindset to identify the financial strengths and weaknesses of businesses, as well as for them to understand the key drivers supporting operating cash flow of an organization.

Our study pack and course assignments are very refreshing in the sense that they are derived from globally known credit management resources. Complex information is provided in a manner that is understandable and easy to grasp; thus knowledge gained in the programme is put to work in the real world as students learn to look at each of their customers with more of an analytical mind and beyond the simple ratios on financial statements. These allow them to make projections on how a company may perform under different financial circumstances.

From the perspective of professional qualification programmes, top-level PSCFM lecturers present corporate credit management strategy which deliver concepts and frameworks vital to analyzing and formulating credit business policy strategies to the forefront of students’ thinking. Focusing on the Five Forces of Competitiveness – supplier power, threat of new entry, industry rivalry, threat of substitutes and buyer power – the credit learners’ class explores how to determine how a business can position itself to increase returns and create economic value for owners and stakeholders.

Both the study pack and monthly general students’ class deals with practical day-to-day scenarios which a typical credit executive often come across even as potentially abstract ideas are put into the context of everyday work situations. Grounding these ideas into specific ‘real life’ business dealings helps our students envision their usefulness.

The PSCFM course Ethics in Business and Credit Professionals take into account what’s failing ethically in companies. Ripping course material directly from the PSCFM library, matters ranging from business law, to environmentalism, to organizational ethics and corporate responsibility are looked at in a case-by-case examination. Quite frankly, our credit executive students take from the course some frameworks for identifying the ethical dimensions that are inherent in credit business decisions.

Just as high on the priorities for credit managers and their executive learners is international business. As the world continues to progress towards globalization and economies overlap, PSCFM lecturers lend their expertise to international credit and risk management, a subject that has had an ever greater onus put on it for credit managers. The traditional Five C’s of credit are combined with the Global 3 C’s – country, currency and culture – to identify risks worldwide. Risk mitigation techniques, such as letters of credit, credit insurance, factoring, forfaiting, bonds and guarantees are also discussed in detail. Students learn that more than just economic factors can affect credit decisions in today’s marketplace, as social and political sectors can have a weighty influence.

Of course, the PSCFM programme places importance on all facets of credit management fundamentals. In the end, the object of PSCFM is to be pragmatically complimentary to the experiences of credit professionals.

It’s the goal of PSCFM to make its students better credit managers, making them to have a larger toolbox with more tools to evaluate, assess, grant and monitor credit while minimizing risk to their employers. That is the benefit to both the students and their employer organizations.