Relationship lending: A source of support or a means of exploitation?

Using a dataset from the State Bank of Pakistan containing each and every commercial loan generated in the economy from 2006 to 2013, we find that, on average, a longer relationship length is associated with lower risk premiums but higher collateral requirements. However, further examination paints a far more complex picture. The impact of relationship length on risk premiums and collateral varies substantially with the type of lender, as well as the type of borrower. We argue that conflicting empirical findings on relationship lending are the result of using datasets limited to certain types of borrowers or financial institutions.     

Cross-ownership and collateral in lending

Information asymmetry is a major obstacle in both formal and informal loan markets. However, when a borrower and a lender are connected via cross-ownership, this obstacle can be significantly reduced. Cross-ownership enables lenders to collect more concrete and precise information about borrowers, and this lowered information asymmetry reduces the likelihood that the lender will require the borrower to provide collateral. Using a data set of 1091 intercorporate loans from China, we find strong support for the prediction that cross-ownership between lenders and borrowers lowers the collateral requirements by more than 50%. This relation is more pronounced for informationally opaque borrowers and for lending firms with a controlling stake in the borrowing firms.     

Lending relationships in line-of-credit and nonline-of-credit loans: Evidence from collateral use in small business

Lender–borrower relationships facilitate monitoring in small business loans. We investigate how the duration and scope of the bank–borrower relationship affect the decision to secure line-of-credit and nonline-of-credit loans. We find that the likelihood of collateralizing a line of credit decreases with the length of the bank–borrower relationship. For nonline-of-credit loans, however, the incidence of collateral pledge decreases with the number of lender-provided financial services used by the borrower. Our finding indicates that the mechanism through which banks obtain private information depends on the type of the loan. Pooling across loan types may dilute the impact of both the duration and scope on the terms of a loan.     

Do banks care about analysts' forecasts when designing loan contracts?

We investigate whether banks rely on the information content in equity analysts’ annual earnings forecasts when assessing the risk of potential borrowers. While a long literature finds that analysts provide useful information to market participants, it is not clear that banks, which have access to privileged information, would benefit from publicly available analysts’ forecasts. If, however, banks do rely on this information, then more precise private information in earnings forecasts may inform banks. We focus our analysis on the requirement of collateral because it is a direct measure of default risk, whereas other loan terms such as interest spread and debt covenants can also protect against other risks, such as asset misappropriation. The direct link between collateral and default risk allows us to examine whether information from analysts is relevant to banks when designing loan contracts. Consistent with our predictions, we find that higher precision of the private information in analysts’ earnings forecasts is associated with a lower likelihood of requiring collateral, and this effect is larger when a borrower does not have a prior relationship with the lender or their accounting or credit quality is low. We also find that this association disappears after the implementation of Regulation FD, consistent with this regulation reducing analysts’ access to private information.     

Local versus foreign banks: A home market advantage in loan syndications

This paper investigates the contract terms of local versus foreign bank lead loan syndications to test two opposing theories: the home market advantage gained by closer geographical proximity and soft information from existing banking relationships, versus the hold-up problem where banks exploit their information advantage at the borrower's expense. The home market advantage was supported with domestic banks informationally superior to their foreign counterparts. Loans arranged by the former carry lower interest rates, have longer maturities, and are less likely to require collateral. These results are robust after controlling for the non-randomness of the lender–borrower matching process.     

Information content of bank loan announcements to Asian corporations during periods of economic uncertainty

In this study, changes in the borrower–lender relationship prior to and after the Asian crisis are examined. We find the lender quality is the most important determinant of the information content of bank loan announcements, as evidenced by differences in the banking systems of Hong Kong, Korea, Thailand and Taiwan. In addition, the results suggest that the commercial banking relationship is increasingly important in times of economic uncertainty.     

How does working in a finance profession affect mortgage delinquency?

This paper uses a dataset from a leading American subprime lender, which contains detailed information on borrower and loan characteristics. We find that financial professionals are less likely to become delinquent. This effect cannot be explained by borrower characteristics, such as income, education, loan terms, property characteristics, geographic effects, or strategic default. We also find variation in the effect of working in a financial profession across borrowers of different ages and income levels. We discuss explanations for these results.     

Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans

Using a data set that records banks’ ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find that banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to borrower credit risk, relationship length, collateral, and the provision of business tax returns, but in complex ways. The relation between borrower risk and financial statement requests has an inverted U‐shape; and tax returns can be both substitutes and complements to financial statements, conditional on borrower characteristics and the degree of bank–borrower information asymmetry. Frequent financial reporting is used to monitor collateral, but only for non–real estate loans and only when the collateral is easily accessible to lenders. Collectively, our results provide novel evidence of a fundamental information demand for financial reporting in monitoring small commercial borrowers and a specific channel through which banks fulfill their role as delegated monitors.     

Recovery rates of commercial lending: Empirical evidence for German companies

There are very few studies concerning the recovery rate of bank loans. Prediction models of recovery rates are increasing in importance because of the Basel II-framework, the impact on credit risk management, and the calculation of loan rates. In this study, we focus the analyses on the distribution of recovery rates and the impact of the quota of collateral, the creditworthiness of the borrower, the size of the company and the intensity of the client relationship on the recovery rate. All our hypotheses can be confirmed. A higher quota of collateral leads to a higher recovery rate, whereas the risk premium of the borrower and the size of the company is negatively related to the recovery rate. Borrowers with an intense client relationship with the bank exhibit a higher recovery rate.     

Determinants of the incidence of U.S. Mortgage Loan Modifications

This paper combines data on the performance of mortgage loans with detailed borrower, neighborhood, and property characteristics to examine the factors that determine the outcomes of seriously delinquent loans. We employ multinomial logit models in a hazard framework to explain how loan, borrower, property, servicer and neighborhood characteristics affect which of the following four outcomes results from a seriously delinquent loan: (1) the borrower cures the delinquency; (2) the borrower and lender agree to modify the loan; (3) the borrower suffers a liquidation (short sale, deed in lieu, foreclosure auction sale or REO); or (4) the loan remains delinquent. In particular, we focus on mortgage modification. We find that the outcomes of delinquent loans are significantly related to: current LTV, FICO scores, especially risky loan characteristics, the servicer of the loan, neighborhood housing price appreciation, and whether the borrower received foreclosure counseling.     

Tests of ex ante versus ex post theories of collateral using private and public information

Collateral is a widely used, but not well understood, debt contracting feature. Two broad strands of theoretical literature explain collateral as arising from the existence of either ex ante private information or ex post incentive problems between borrowers and lenders. However, the extant empirical literature has been unable to isolate each of these effects. This paper attempts to do so using a credit registry that is unique in that it allows the researcher to have access to some private information about borrower risk that is unobserved by the lender. The data also include public information about borrower risk, loan contract terms, and ex post performance for both secured and unsecured loans. The results suggest that the ex post theories of collateral are empirically dominant, although the ex ante theories are also valid for customers with short borrower–lender relations that are relatively unknown to the lender.     

So what do I get? The bank's view of lending relationships

While many empirical studies document borrower benefits of lending relationships, less is known about lender benefits. A relationship lender's informational advantage over a non-relationship lender may generate a higher probability of selling information-sensitive products to its borrowers. Our results show that the probability of a relationship lender providing a future loan is 42%, while for a non-relationship lender, this probability is 3%. Consistent with theory, we find that borrowers with greater information asymmetries are significantly likely to obtain future loans from their relationship lenders. Relationship lenders are likely to be chosen to provide debt/equity underwriting services, but this effect is economically small.     

Reexamining the empirical relation between loan risk and collateral: The roles of collateral liquidity and types

This paper offers a possible explanation for the conflicting results in the literature concerning the empirical relation between collateral and loan risk. We posit that differences in collateral characteristics, such as liquidity, may be associated with the empirical dominance of different risk-collateral relations implied by economic theory. Using credit registry data and a novel identification strategy to control for borrower and lender selection effects allows us to differentiate between the ex ante and ex post theories of collateral. We find that collateral overall is associated with lower risk premiums and higher default rates. The results indicate an important role for collateral in mitigating losses and reducing risk-taking incentives, consistent with ex post theories. Liquid collateral is associated with especially low risk premiums, and these loans perform better than those with illiquid collateral or no collateral. We also find that individual collateral types exhibit significant variation in terms of risk-collateral relations, with some consistent with ex ante theories and others with ex post theories. Our results suggest that the conflicting results in the literature may occur because different samples may be dominated by different types of collateral with different economic characteristics.     

The economic role of foreclosures

We consider the economic consequences of changing the foreclosure rules. By incorporating renegotiation into the analysis, we show that although renegotiation decreases the number of foreclosures it can make the effects of foreclosure more significant. Even when foreclosure does not actually occur, a change in foreclosure rules changes the threat points of lender and borrower in any renegotiation, and thus changes the effective interest rate that the lender receives. In the long run, stated interest rates on loans will adjust to compensate for any change in the effective interest rate. We also examine the impact of a change in foreclosure laws on the borrower's welfare.     

A lender-based theory of collateral

We consider an imperfectly competitive loan market in which a local relationship lender has an information advantage vis-à-vis distant transaction lenders. Competitive pressure from the transaction lenders prevents the local lender from extracting the full surplus from projects. As a result, the local lender inefficiently rejects marginally profitable projects. Collateral mitigates the inefficiency by increasing the local lender's payoff from precisely those marginally profitable projects that she inefficiently rejects. The model predicts that, controlling for observable borrower risk, collateralized loans are more likely to default ex post, which is consistent with the empirical evidence. The model also predicts that borrowers for whom local lenders have a relatively smaller information advantage face higher collateral requirements, and that technological innovations that narrow the information advantage of local lenders, such as small business credit scoring, lead to a greater use of collateral in lending relationships.     

Optimal Loan Interest Rate Contract Design

This paper analyzes optimal loan interest rate contracts under conditions of risky, symmetric information for one-period (static) and multi-period (dynamic) models. The optimal loan interest rate depends upon the volatility of, and co-variation among the market interest rate, borrower collateral, and borrower income, as well as the time horizon and the risk preferences of lenders and borrowers. For a risk-averse borrower with stochastic collateral, variable interest rate contracts are, in general, Pareto optimal. For plausible assumptions, the optimal loan interest rate for the multi-period model often exhibits muted responses to changes in market interest rates, making fixed rate loans a reasonable approximation for the optimal loan. Hence, in the absence of optimal contracts, long-term (short-term) borrowers tend to prefer fixed rate (variable) contracts.     

Breakeven Determination of Loan Limits for Reverse Mortgages under Information Asymmetry

Since the loan limit of a reverse mortgage is a major concern for the borrower as well as the lender, this paper attempts to develop an option-based model to evaluate the loan limits of reverse mortgages. Our model can identify several crucial determinants for reverse mortgage loan limits, such as initial housing price, expected housing price growth, house price volatility, mortality distribution, and interest rates. We also pay special attention to the important implication of mortgage lenders’ informational advantage over reverse mortgage borrowers concerning housing market risk. In reverse mortgage markets, the elderly borrowers typically hold far less, relative to the lenders, or no information about the lenders’ underlying mortgage pools. Such information asymmetry leads these two categories of market participants to generate different perspectives on the risk of the collateralized properties, which can be identified to be important in determining the maximum loan amounts of reverse mortgages. We further find that the maximum loan amount of a reverse mortgage decreases in the correlation between the returns on the pooled underlying housing properties but increases with the number of the pooled mortgages.     

Do Tighter Loan Covenants Signal Improved Future Corporate Results? The Case of Performance Pricing Covenants

Covenants in corporate bonds and loan agreements mitigate agency conflicts between borrowers and lenders and may provide a signal of borrower quality to help resolve information asymmetry. Performance pricing covenants in bank loans specify automatic adjustments to loan spreads based on borrowers’ subsequent performance. Our covenant signaling framework views interest‐decreasing performance pricing as a tight covenant associated with borrowers’ private information on improved future performance accompanied by reduced credit risk. This positive signal is associated with larger positive loan announcement returns and greater improvements in future borrower performance. Further, in addition to signaling value, we find that the spread impact of this class of covenant also depends on its option value and reduction in transaction costs.     

汇率敏感性会影响企业贷款利率吗？——基于中国上市公司的分析

本文基于中国A股上市公司2009-2018年的数据,测算了企业价值对人民币汇率变动的敏感性。在此基础上,实证检验了汇率敏感性(企业价值对汇率变动的敏感程度)对企业贷款利率的影响和作用机制。研究发现:汇率敏感性与企业贷款利率之间显著正相关,且这种关系在拥有境外收入、境外投资和使用外汇衍生品的公司中更加显著。进一步分析发现,对于存在密切银企关系、较大的股东债权人利益冲突以及抵押品价值较低的企业,汇率敏感性与贷款利率之间的正相关关系更加显著。本文研究结果表明,随着我国市场化改革的进一步深化,贷款利率将会更加显著地反映企业的汇率敏感性特征。这种效应对于存在海外业务、银行更了解借款公司信息,以及违约可能性更高的公司更加明显。本文研究对于增强我国企业应对汇率风险能力,完善金融机构风险定价能力,引导金融机构服务实体企业具有一定参考意义。     

Debt contract strictness and auditor specialization

The conflicts of interest among managers, shareholders and creditors resulting in agency costs, can be mitigated by restricting managers’ adverse behavior, through financial covenants to better align the various stakeholder interests. Thus, debt contract strictness represents an important aspect of agency costs between creditors, shareholders, and management that is not always captured by interest rates. The contract setting provides a unique opportunity to investigate how creditors may rely on auditors to alleviate information uncertainty stemming from reliance on management's financial reporting and thus alleviate the creditor's potential loss of invested capital. After controlling for borrower risks, loan characteristics, and audit factors, we show that auditor industry specialization is significantly associated with a reduction in the strictness of debt contracts, consistent with creditors viewing certain industry expert auditors as effective monitors against financial reporting manipulation aimed at the avoidance of debt covenant triggers that protect creditors against potential loss. Further, we find that the association between loan strictness and auditor specialization is attenuated by stronger corporate governance systems, external monitors, and prior lender relationships.