For most financial institutions today, lending is a multistep process that often is separated from the credit review process. In an ideal situation, the credit proposal delineates the inherent risks to the transaction; however, the thrust of credit approval is more often the internal selling of the deal. As such, the credit proposal, if it does err, errs in overselling the strengths of the credit and in underestimating the risks in the transaction. In researching a new book on corporate lending, one of the authors examined some twenty loan agreements, selecting several for inclusion in the text. In every company or industry that was analyzed, the problems experienced could not have been discovered by traditional credit analysis. Instead, they resulted from several factors:performance not essentially at variance from that of its deteriorating industry negative conditions in the economy; fraud; and reduced demand due to the recession that began in 2008. The concept of scenario analysis in bank lending can only be effective if research is conducted to determine the causal factors that effect loan repayment. The authors suggest that non-performing loan experience should be studied over several years to develop regressions on selected independent variables.