After the recent financial crisis has hooked the banking system to its very foundations, Hartmut Brinkmeyer contributes to the question of how bank characteristics influence bank loan supply during crisis periods by developing a well-founded theoretical framework. The econometrical design deploys a number of remarkably innovative ideas such as the implementation of a bank-specific, self-chosen target capital ratio or a very convincing approach to the disentanglement of loan supply and demand. The results of this study deliver a profound insight into the lending behavior of European banks and explicitly urge academic and practical discussion.
We study bank portfolio allocations during the transition of the real sector to a knowledge economy in which firms use less tangible capital and invest more in intangible assets. We show that, as firms shift toward intangible assets that have lower collateral values, banks reallocate their portfolios away from commercial loans toward other assets, primarily residential real estate loans and liquid assets. This effect is more pronounced for large and less well capitalized banks and is robust to controlling for real estate loan demand. Our results suggest that increased firm investment in intangible assets can explain up to 20% of bank portfolio reallocation from commercial to residential lending over the last four decades.
We examine the composition and drivers of cross-border bank lending between 1995 and 2012, distinguishing between syndicated and non-syndicated loans. We show that on-balance sheet syndicated loan exposures account for almost one third of total cross-border loan exposures during this period. Furthermore, syndicated loan exposures increased during the global financial crisis due to large drawdowns on credit lines extended before the crisis. Our empirical analysis of the drivers of cross-border loan exposures in a large bilateral dataset shows three main results. First, banks with lower levels of capital favor syndicated over other kinds of cross-border loans. Second, borrower country characteristics such as level of development, economic size, and capital account openness, are less important in driving syndicated than non-syndicated loan activity, suggesting a diversification motive for syndication. Third, information asymmetries between lender and borrower countries, which are important both in normal and crisis times, became more binding for both types of cross-border lending activity during the recent crisis.
Sophisticated banking is vital for modern society to function and prosper. Banks lend to individuals and corporations but do so after carefully exploring the risks they undertake to each customer. This book examines the important role of lending in banking operations and how banks can implement safe and effective loan initiatives. Banks rely on lending to generate profits, but it can be a risky venture. It is important for banking professionals to understand how to mitigate those risks. Bank Lending from the Hong Kong Institute of Bankers discusses a variety of topics that impact a bank's loan strategy. This is an essential read for candidates studying for the HKIB Associateship Examination and those who want to acquire expert knowledge of Hong Kong's bank lending system. Topics covered in this book include: Assessing and reducing lending risk Understanding the customer through financial statements Using ratios to determine risk Setting up an internal structure to reduce risk Pricing and managing loans Dah Sing Bank is delighted to sponsor this resourceful book. The Dah Sing Group is a leading financial services group in Hong Kong, active in providing banking, insurance, financial, and other related services in Hong Kong, Macau, and the People's Republic of China. The Dah Sing Group has gained a reputation as one of the most progressive and innovative financial services groups. Keys to its success are the strength of the Dah Sing management team and the group's commitment to serving its customers.
The effect of bank capital on lending is a critical determinant of the linkage between financial conditions and real activity, and has received especial attention in the recent financial crisis. The authors use panel-regression techniques to study the lending of large bank holding companies (BHCs) and find small effects of capital on lending. They then consider the effect of capital ratios on lending using a variant of Lown and Morgan's VAR model, and again find modest effects of bank capital ratio changes on lending. The authors¿ estimated models are then used to understand recent developments in bank lending and, in particular, to consider the role of TARP-related capital injections in affecting these developments. Illus. A print on demand pub.
This paper relies on administrative data to study determinants and implications of US banks’ Information Technology (IT) investments, which have increased six-fold over two decades. Large and small banks had similar IT expenses a decade ago. Since then, large banks sharply increased their spending, especially those which were more exposed to competition from fintech lenders. Other local-level and bank-level factors, such as county income and bank income sources, also contribute to explain the heterogeneity in IT investments. Analysis of the mortgage market reveals that fintechs’ lending behavior is more similar to that of non-bank financial intermediaries rather than IT-savvy banks, suggesting that factors other than technology are responsible for the differences between banks and other lenders. However, both IT-savvy banks and fintech lend to lower income borrowers, pointing towards benefits for financial inclusion from higher IT adoption. Banks’ IT investments are also shown to matter for the responsiveness of bank lending to monetary policy.
This book is a comprehensive, yet concise text that brings together all aspects of SME banking theories and empirical studies in one text. The book contains the latest policy debates on money creation and credit rationing and the relative role of demand-side and supply-side factors affecting SME financing. Readers will understand the borrower-specific, lender-specific and business environment drivers of bank finance for SMEs as well as the determinants of loan contract terms, particularly the risk premium and collateral. Readers will also understand how loan officers acquire proprietary information on SMEs and apply various lending techniques, such as financial statement lending, relationship lending and credit scoring to the loan underwriting process. In addition, the book also features recent trends on the rise of alternative finance intermediaries such as online peer-to-peer lenders and the competitive implications for traditional banks providing loans to SMEs. Findings from this work will thus be of particular interest to commercial bankers, bank-dependent small business borrowers as well as policy makers, and researchers in central banks, development banks, development agencies and international financial institutions.
Banking experts review, simplify corporate lending process. James S. Sagner and Herbert Jacobs advise on corporate lending to help bankers, lenders and corporate finance managers avoid future credit problems in Handbook of Corporate Lending: A Guide for Bankers and Financial Managers. The authors argue for a fresh approach to improving bank lending to corporations. Historically, most banks spend their efforts in evaluating loan proposals from businesses before approving or denying credit. The authors argue persuasively and with examples that lending is a two-step process: the analysis of the company in the context of its industry and its competitors; and then a loan agreement that identifies the credit risks. The book demonstrates through the use of case studies how to limit those risks to the lenders and just as importantly, to the company. Sagner and Jacobs, former senior bankers and consultants and educators to the banking industry, systematically review the process of corporate credit decision-making. Too few banks are now providing adequate formal credit-training. This leaves bankers without the proper guidance to review credit requests and create precautions for corporate borrowers and lenders. Sagner and Jacobs show readers how such factors influence credit, funding, pricing decisions and proper structuring of loans. The book covers such topics as trends in commercial loan activity, the credit loan agreement, the banker's responsibilities, risk management measurement and the credit process. Eight cases in the book highlight a variety of credit issues. "The book is written from the perspective of the banker or other lender who makes these important decisions," said Sagner. "But business people, particularly global financial managers who must secure credit and maintain excellent relations with their lenders, need to understand this important information." Sagner and Jacobs help readers navigate the issues confronting financial and banking managers. The book aims to explain the financial processes lenders use to make decisions, and to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of credit measurements so that business and financial managers are better prepared to arrange credit facilities.
We examine the impact of banks’ exposure to market liquidity shocks through wholesale funding on their supply of credit during the financial crisis in the United States. We focus on mortgage lending to minimize the impact of confounding demand factors that could potentially be large when comparing banks’ overall lending across heterogeneous categories of credit. The disaggregated data on mortgage applications that we use allows us to study the time variations in banks’ decisions to grant mortgage loans, while controlling for bank, borrower, and regional characteristics. The wealth of data also allows us to carry out matching exercises that eliminate imbalances in observable applicant characteristics between wholesale and retail banks, as well as various other robustness tests. We find that banks that were more reliant on wholesale funding curtailed their credit significantly more than retail-funded banks during the crisis. The demand for mortgage credit, on the other hand, declined evenly across wholesale and retail banks. To understand the aggregate implications of our findings, we exploit the heterogeneity in mortgage funding across U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and find that wholesale funding was a strong and significant predictor of a sharper decline in overall mortgage credit at the MSA level.
We analyze the relative roles of subsidiary and parent banking group traits in driving foreign banks' lending patterns in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region before and during the crisis. We use a bank-level dataset on Western European banking groups and their CEE subsidiaries over the 2002-2013 period. We find that lower capital-to-asset ratios and higher non-performing loans (NPL) ratios at either the subsidiary or the parent bank level significantly lowered subsidiary lending growth before and during the crisis. The onset of the crisis not only lowered subsidiary lending growth in the CEE countries, but also has altered the relationship between balance sheet conditions and lending growth. However, we also find strong evidence that this crisis effect is significantly less pronounced for subsidiaries participating in the Vienna Initiative. Our results' policy implications include purging banks of NPLs, enhanced regulatory coordination and the inclusion of parent bank traits in countercyclical capital buffer calculations.
