Defects in credit management skills at Bankwest prior to its 2008 takeover by Commonwealth Bank fell under scrutiny at the financial services royal commission yesterday.An amiable examination of David Cohen, CBA's chief risk officer, yielded no awkward insights relating to CBA's much criticised approach to regrading Bankwest's business loan book from 2009 onwards.There was "a shortfall in collective provisioning" at Bankwest and CBA was fulfilling "a prudential obligation to accurately provision," as well as to prepare its June 2010 accounts thoroughly, Cohen explained to Commissioner Kenneth Hayne.Michael Hodge, counsel assisting, questioned Cohen on the rationale and some details behind the bank's Project Magellan.Magellan, Cohen said, was only one of a series of reviews that focused fresh eyes (including external accountants) on more than half of the Bankwest "good book". This dragged all loans of a selected type under review, including all loans for pubs and hotels."Each of the reviews uncovered some concerns," Cohen said. "Broadly speaking, each of the reviews uncovered some concerns around the level of provisioning." This work included a review of the Property Finance Unit for groups borrowing more than A$5 million for property finance.Cohen said that one early analysis by then Bankwest CEO Jon Sutton - appointed by CBA following the takeover - "makes for very poor reading, and highlights … that there was no real credit review process in place [at Bankwest]." Cohen said that in 2009 "there were concerns about some aspects of the risk management function, there were also concerns about the operation of the business itself when it was assessing credit. So it was both at the business level and at the risk management function level." He said that "the credit ratings used by Bankwest, when it was rating particular business loans, were perhaps not as diligently applied as Commonwealth Bank applied credit ratings. And secondly, the ongoing management of a loan by the business relationship managers, was not as active, and the loan and the progress of the loan through its life cycle was not as actively monitored by the relationship managers as it should have been."