Credit derivatives and bank credit supply

Credit derivatives are the latest in a series of innovations that have had a significant impact on credit markets. Using a micro data set of individual corporate loans, this paper explores whether use of credit derivatives is associated with an increase in bank credit supply. We find only limited evidence that greater use of credit derivatives is associated with greater supply of bank credit. The strongest effect is for large term loans—newly negotiated loan extensions to large corporate borrowers, with a largely negative impact on (previously negotiated) commitment lending. Even for large term borrowers, increases in the volume of credit are offset by higher spreads. These findings suggest that the benefits of the growth of credit derivatives may be narrow, accruing mainly to large firms that are likely to be “named credits” in these transactions. Finally, use of credit derivatives appears to be complementary to other forms of hedging by banks, though the banks most active in hedging appear to charge more for additional amounts of credit.