1 April 2026
Override memos that rest on the score they are meant to set aside
An override paper that mainly restates the engine outcome has not yet explained the exception. The financial reason still has to be written.
Override files are often the most carefully stored papers in a credit shop and the least carefully written. The memo names the score, names the product, and then offers a sentence about the customer relationship or a competing offer. The application’s financial exhibits are rarely re-argued.
That matters because an override is a claim that the engine’s reading of the file should not govern. If the memo does not return to capacity, collateral, or a named policy gate, the claim is empty. A later reader — internal audit, a purchaser, a supervisor — cannot tell whether the exception was a judgement or a habit.
In samples we have read, circular memos are the largest group: they say the score was low, therefore an override was needed, therefore the file was approved. The middle of that sentence is missing. What in the pack justified leaving the engine path? If the answer is ‘the committee was comfortable’, the file still does not contain the reason.
A usable memo is short. It states the engine outcome, states the financial facts that the engine could not be expected to weigh (a documented near-term contract, a guarantee that is actually in the file, a debt being refinanced on terms that change capacity), and states the condition that will be evidenced. It does not need warmth. It needs a trail.
Credit heads sometimes ask us to score the quality of officers. That is not the engagement. The engagement is whether the paper would survive a reader who does not know the officer. Where a book of overrides would not, the finding is about the exception framework, not about a person.
If your committee already uses a template, the audit is still useful. Templates fill themselves with the same empty fields. We read through the template to the exhibits.