Capital and Earnings Management: Evidence from Alternative Banking Business Models

This paper examines whether institutional characteristics distinguishing Islamic from conventional banks lead to distinctive capital and earnings management behavior through the use of loan loss provisions. In our sample countries, the two banking sectors operate under different regulatory frameworks: conventional banks currently apply the “incurred” loan loss model until 2018 whereas Islamic banks mandatorily adopt an “expected” loan loss model. Our results provide significant evidence of capital and earnings management practices via loan loss provisions in conventional banks. This finding is more prominent for large and loss-generating banks. By contrast, Islamic banks tend not to use loan loss provisions in either capital or earnings management, irrespective of the bank's size, earnings profile, or the structure of their loan loss model. This difference may be attributed to the constrained business model of Islamic banking, strict governance, and ethical orientation.     

A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO MICROFINANCE CREDIT SCORING VIA A CLASSIFICATION AND REGRESSION TREE

Microfinance institutions' (MFIs') peculiar lending methodology is characterized by an unchallenged decision‐making predominance from the part of loan officers. Indeed, the latter are in charge of providing a great deal of diagnostic information regarding the entrepreneur's psychological traits likely to help them run a business. This paper constitutes an initial attempt towards exploring the role of borrowers' psychological traits in predicting future default occurrences. It builds on a nonparametric credit scoring model, based on a decision tree, including borrowers' quantitative behavioural traits as input for the final scoring model. On applying data collected from a Tunisian microfinance bank, the major depicted result lies in the fact that borrowers' psychological traits constitute a major information source in predicting their creditworthiness. Actually, the variables deployed have helped reduce the proportion of bad loans classified as good loans by 3.125%, which leads to a decrease in MFIs' losses by 4.8%. In addition, the results indicate that the scoring model based on a classification and regression tree (CART) outperforms the classic techniques. Actually, implementing this CART model might well help MFIs reduce misclassification costs by 6.8% and 13.5% in comparison with the discriminant analysis and logistic regression models respectively. Our conceived model, we consider, would be of great practical implication for microfinance and may provide a means for securing competitive advantage over other MFIs that fail to implement such a methodology. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evidence of Forward-Looking Loan Loss Provisioning with Credit Market Information

Our paper makes a fundamental contribution by studying loan loss provisioning over the credit cycle as three distinct phases. Looking at the three distinct phases of the financial crisis – the pre-crisis period, crisis period, and post-crisis period – is important as loan loss provisioning is driven by different factors in each, in part due to extensive shifts in (or in the application of) regulatory rule. Controlling for credit market information using data from the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Surveys (SLOOS) we extend the work of previous studies of forward-looking loan loss provisions using the delayed expected loss recognition approach. We contribute to the growing literature on forward-looking loan loss provisioning and early in the cycle loss recognition by incorporating a broader range of available credit information and explicitly controlling for structural breaks in the sample corresponding to the financial crisis.     

新会计准则对商业银行贷款损失准备的影响

与国际接轨的新会计准则的实施,给我国商业银行的贷款损失准备及其监管带来了很大影响。新会计准则对银行贷款损失准备监管的主要影响有:(1)新会计准则关于贷款损失准备的规定与监管审慎性要求相矛盾;(2)新会计准则规定的贷款损失准备计提方法与监管要求的贷款损失准备计提方法有分歧。新会计准则对商业银行的贷款损失准备的影响主要有:(1)降低了商业银行利用贷款损失准备操纵利润的可能性;(2)使得贷款损失准备具有更大的波动性;(3)引入时间价值,可能导致准备水平的提高;(4)可能导致利息收入和减值准备同步增加,并将影响各会计期间的利润发生一定程度的变化。本文对以上影响进行了分析,并提出了相应的对策建议。     

The procyclicality of loan loss provisions in Islamic banks

From a sample of Islamic banks around the world from 1997 to 2012, this paper examines whether loan loss provisioning in Islamic banks is procyclical. Our empirical findings highlight that loan loss provisioning in Islamic banks remains procyclical, although the ‘expected’ loan loss model (E-LLM) has been implemented for Islamic banks in several countries. A closer investigation further documents that Islamic banks also use loan loss provisions for discretionary managerial actions, especially related to capital management in which loan loss reserves and provisions are inflated when bank capitalization declines. Eventually, this paper highlights that higher capitalization can mitigate the procyclicality of loan loss provisions in Islamic banks. In other words, loan loss provisioning becomes countercyclical for Islamic banks with higher capitalization. This paper therefore casts doubts on the adoption of the E-LLM for Islamic banks to promote countercyclical effects, because the E-LLM may be influenced by managerial discretion, including opportunistic capital management using loan loss provisions that may undermine the importance of maintaining bank capitalization.     

The effect of borrowers' accounting conservatism on lenders' loan loss provisions: Evidence from China's banking industry

This paper investigates how borrowers' accounting conservatism affects lenders' loan loss provisions in the Chinese banking context. We predict that when borrowers' financial statements are more conservative, lenders receive borrowers' bad news in a timelier manner and set aside more loan loss provisions. The empirical results confirm that borrowers' accounting conservatism is positively associated with lenders' loan loss provisions, as the former affects the latter via its impact on loan classification, and this positive association is more pronounced when information asymmetry is higher. In heterogeneity tests, we find that this positive association is stronger for non-state-owned, listed, and less prudent lenders and also varies across debt contract characteristics. Collectively, the results of this study offer insights into how lenders accrue loan losses when borrowers' financial reporting is more conservative.     

Managing specific accruals vs. structuring transactions: Evidence from banking industry

This study investigates earnings management through managing specific accruals vs. structuring transactions in the banking industry. This paper explores the circumstances under which banks manipulate loan loss provisions vs. circumstances that lead banks to structure loan sales and securitizations for the purpose of achieving earnings benchmarks. Empirical results show that banks manage earnings through loan loss provisions, before resorting to structuring transactions, to avoid small earnings decreases and or just meet or beat analysts' forecasts. The findings imply that structuring loan sales and securitizations is more likely to be used as a secondary instrument. In addition, I find that the earnings of banks with lower discretionary loan loss provisions and higher discretionary gains from loan sales and securitizations are priced more negatively, suggesting that investors impose incremental penalties on the joint use of loan loss provisions and gains from loan sales and securitization to meet or beat earnings benchmarks.     

Banks’ procyclical behavior: Does provisioning matter?

A panel of 186 European banks is used for the period 1992–2004 to determine if banking behaviors, induced by the capital adequacy constraint and the provisioning system, amplify credit fluctuations. We find that poorly capitalized banks are constrained to expand credit. We also find that loan loss provisions (LLP) made in order to cover expected future loan losses (non-discretionary LLP) amplify credit fluctuations. By contrast, LLP used for management objectives (discretionary LLP) do not affect credit fluctuations. The findings of our research are consistent with the call for the implementation of a dynamic provisioning system in Europe.     

Do Loan Loss Provisions Affect the Credit Fluctuations in China’s Banking System?

ABSTRACT

The global financial crisis of 2008 sparked new ideas on pro-cyclical transmission in the financial system. The accounting treatment method of loan loss provisions differs between the accounting standards that banks use and the supervisory rules of banks. This fundamental difference has attracted wide attention from academics and regulators. This article studies whether bank loan loss provisions affect credit fluctuation in China’s banking system. We divide loan loss provisions into discretionary and non-discretionary loan loss provisions. We find that non-discretionary loan loss provisions result in greater credit fluctuation, whereas discretionary loan loss provisions have no significant impact on credit fluctuation. Further evidence shows that the relation between non-discretionary loan loss provisions and credit fluctuations does not vary among different types of banks. Overall, our study shows that non-discretionary loan loss provisions can increase credit fluctuation and therefore strengthen banks’ pro-cyclical behavior.     

When to Lean against the Wind

In this paper, we show that policymakers can distinguish between good and bad credit booms with high accuracy and they can do so in real time. Evidence from 17 countries over nearly 150 years of modern financial history shows that credit booms that are accompanied by house price booms and a rising loan‐to‐deposit ratio are much more likely to end in a systemic banking crisis than other credit booms. We evaluate the predictive accuracy for different classification models and show that characteristics observed in real time contain valuable information for sorting the data into good and bad booms.     

Bank ownership and credit over the business cycle: Is lending by state banks less procyclical?

This paper finds that lending by state banks is less procyclical than lending by private banks, especially in countries with good governance. Lending by state banks in high income countries is even countercyclical. On the liability side, state banks expand their total liabilities and, in particular, their non-deposit liabilities relatively little during booms. Public banks also report loan non-performance more evenly over the business cycle. Overall our results suggest that state banks can play a useful role in stabilizing credit over the business cycle as well as during periods of financial instability. However, the track record of state banks in credit allocation remains quite poor, questioning the wisdom of using state banks as a short term countercyclical tool.     

Countercyclical prudential buffers and bank risk-taking

We investigate the effects of countercyclical prudential buffers on bank risk-taking. We exploit the introduction of dynamic loan loss provisioning in Spain, mandating that banks use historical average loss rates in their estimation of loan loss provisions. We find that dynamic loan loss provisioning is associated with reductions in timely loan loss provisioning. Banks that previously recognized loan losses in a timely fashion exhibit the greatest reductions in timeliness and consequently extend loans to riskier borrowers with lower accounting quality. Our results have policy implications for the debate on the use of financial reporting requirements in mitigating capital pro-cyclicality.     

Book Reviews

Following the financial and banking crisis of the late 2000s, accounting regulators sought to replace the incurred-loss method of loan-loss provisioning by a more forward-looking expected-loss method. Difficulties arose, including with respect to the weight that expected-loss provisioning should place on objective evidence of loss relative to evidence of a less specific and more judgemental nature. This paper provides evidence relevant to this issue by examining whether loan-loss provisioning by UK banks was less timely under the stricter evidence requirements of the IAS 39 incurred-loss regime implemented in 2005 than under the less strict evidence requirements of the previous UK incurred-loss regime. It does so by reference to the relationship in time between loan write-offs and loan-loss expense. The results do not suggest that provisioning became less timely under the stricter evidence requirements of IAS 39. There is no evidence that provisioning became less timely immediately prior to the crisis of the late 2000s. Also, there is no evidence that general provisioning, permitted under the pre-IAS 39 regime, enhanced the timeliness of loan-loss provisioning. The results do not suggest that stricter requirements regarding the evidence necessary to support recognition of loan losses have resulted in less timely loan-loss provisioning.     

Religiosity,borrower gender and loan losses in microfinance institutions: a global evidence

We examine the impact of religious beliefs on loan repayments in 770 microfinance institutions (MFIs) across 65 countries over the period 2006–2018. We find robust evidence of a negative relationship between religiosity and loan losses in MFIs. We also find that the relationship between religiosity and loan losses is stronger for MFIs in Protestant-dominated countries than in Catholic-dominated countries. Moreover, religiosity improves the operational self-sufficiency of MFIs through a reduction in loan losses. We find that religiosity does not improve the loan repayment behaviour of women borrowers, but it reduces the loan size per borrower. Overall, our evidence suggests that although religiosity reduces loan losses through religiosity-induced lender-risk aversion, it does not improve the loan repayment behaviour of borrowers. We also use several approaches to evaluate our results to the effects of endogeneity.

     

The predictive ability of loan loss provisions in banks – Effects of accounting standards,enforcement and incentives

In this study we compare the predictive ability of loan loss provisions with respect to actual losses under IFRS and local GAAP. The ‘incurred loss model’ of IAS 39 is a model that requires a relatively low level of judgment by preparers compared to alternative models that exist under local GAAP. We find that loan loss provisions in IFRS bank years predict future credit losses to a lesser extent than in local GAAP bank years, consistent with the incurred loss model reducing the timeliness of provisions. We also examine the interaction of standards with enforcement of financial reporting and with preparer incentives. In testing the role of enforcement from, e.g., banking supervisory authorities, we find that the benefits of local GAAP are largely limited to high-enforcement settings. Local GAAP also performs relatively better than IFRS in large and in profitable banks. This has implications for the IASB and the FASB as they prescribe the adoption of the more judgment-based expected loss model in IFRS 9 and the corresponding US GAAP standard (ASC topic 326), as well as for supervisory authorities that will enforce these standards.     

Profit status of microfinance institutions and incentives for earnings management

We theorize that for-profit microfinance institutions (MFIs) have higher incentives to use earnings management techniques when compared to their not-for-profit counterparts. Indeed, we show empirically that, when facing a distress period, for-profit MFIs are more likely to recognize impairment loan loss provisions than not-for-profit ones in about 0.8% of assets. This is consistent with the notion that those institutions are employing “big bath” accounting practices. Finally, using the 2008 crisis as an exogenous shock and country-level recessions as an exogenous measure of distress, we replicate our results.     

《新资本协议》对商业银行信贷运行的影响——兼论其宏观经济效应

《新资本协议》的出台和实施是银行监管历史上一个具有里程碑意义的事件。本文认为,《新资本协议》特别是内部评级法极大地提高了资本监管的风险敏感度,将对商业银行的信贷增长方式、信贷结构调整和贷款损失准备计提、以及宏观经济运行产生一定的影响。按照目前我国商业银行资本充足水平和资产质量,无论是实施标准法还是内部评级法都将强化信贷扩张的资本约束效应。我国应慎重选择《新资本协议》的实施时机,避免由此对信贷供给和宏观经济运行造成的负面冲击。     

Income smoothing among European systemic and non-systemic banks

There is scant research on the financial reporting behaviour of global systemically-important banks (G-SIBs) and non-global systemically-important banks (non-G-SIBs). We examine the link between financial reporting and financial system stability given the understanding that income smoothing is a stability mechanism for banks. We empirically examine whether the way G-SIBs use loan loss provisions (LLPs) to smooth income differ compared to non-G-SIBs and the incentive to do so. We examine 231 European banks and find that income smoothing is pronounced among G-SIBs in the post-crisis period and pronounced among non-G-SIBs in the pre-crisis period. Also, G-SIBs exhibit greater income smoothing when they: (i) have substantial non-performing loans, (ii) are more profitable and meet/exceed minimum regulatory capital ratios (iii) engage in forward-looking loan-loss provisioning and during recessionary periods. The implication of our findings is that capital regulation and abnormal economic fluctuations create incentives for systemic banks to use accounting numbers (loan loss provisions) to smooth income, which also align with the financial system stability objective of bank regulators. Our findings are useful to accounting standard setters in their evaluation of the role of reported accounting numbers for financial system stability, given the current regulatory environment in Europe which focuses on systemic banks.     

Cross-country linkages as determinants of procyclicality of loan loss provisions

Procyclicality in banking may result in financial instability and therefore be destructive to economic growth. The sensitivity of different banking balance sheet and income statement variables to the business cycle is diversified and may be prone to increasing integration of financial markets. In this paper, we address the problem of the influence of financial integration on the transmission of economic shocks from one country to another and consequently on the sensitivity of loan loss provisions (LLPs) to the business cycle. The application of the seemingly unrelated regression equations (SURE) approach to 13 OECD countries in 1995–2009 shows that the procyclicality of LLPs is statistically significant almost in the whole sample of countries. Regardless of the econometric specification, the income-smoothing, capital management and risk management hypotheses are hardly supported by the data. However, in SURE specification, the relationship of bank-specific variables is of higher statistical significance than in the country regression approach. Hence, cross-country interconnectedness is not only economically, but also empirically important when analyzing cross-country diversifications of LLPs.     

The Impact of SFAS No. 114 on the Linear Information Dynamic for Commercial Banks

Increase (decrease) in loan loss provisions would decrease (increases) bank earnings, but increase (decreases) regulatory capital. Previous studies have separately documented earnings and capital management behavior via loan loss provisions by commercial banks. However, it is difficult to isolate a bank's demand for increasing earnings from its demand for regulatory capital because earnings is a source of capital. Based on the objective bank function, this study investigates the impact of SFAS No. 114 on the information content of loan loss provisions in relation to both earnings quality and capital adequacy in a linear information dynamic framework. Test results show that the association between market value with loan loss provisions became significantly stronger for commercial banks in the post- than in the pre-adoption period. As a result, SFAS No. 114 is also found to positively affect the association of market value with both bank earnings and regulatory capital through the clean surplus relation because of the higher value relevance of loan loss provisions. The findings thus provide empirical evidence that SFAS No. 114 has significantly complemented banking regulations in enhancing (reducing) the (dispersion from the) accounting measurement construct of loan loss provisions.