Fintech and banking: What do we know?

This paper is a review of the literature on fintech and its interaction with banking. Included in fintech are innovations in payment systems (including cryptocurrencies), credit markets (including P2P lending), and insurance, with Blockchain-assisted smart contracts playing a role. The paper provides a definition of fintech, examines some statistics and stylized facts, and then reviews the theoretical and empirical literature. The review is organized around four main research questions. The paper summarizes our knowledge on these questions and concludes with questions for future research.     

Banks' consumer lending reaction to fintech and bigtech credit emergence in the context of soft versus hard credit information processing

Access to credit information and the ability to process this information effectively determine the conditions of competition in the credit market. Traditionally, local banks have had an advantage in relationship lending (based on soft credit information), whereas foreign banks are considered to base on hard credit information. With the advent of financial technology (or “fintech”) companies (or “fintechs”) and giant technology (or “bigtech”) companies (or “bigtechs”) providing alternative credit, the conditions of competition in the credit market have changed. In this empirical study, we shed light on the nature of the information advantages fintech and bigtech companies have compared to banks and how alternative lenders use them. We analyze competition in the consumer lending segment between banks and fintechs as well as bigtechs providing alternative lending. We used a database combining bank-level characteristics and country-level proxies for 72 countries from 2013 to 2018. We find that in developed markets, the relationships between fintech and bigtech credit providers and banks are similar and competitive in nature. However, banks' consumer lending grows simultaneously with fintech credit market development in emerging economies, but decreases in the aftermath of the emergence of bigtech credit. Fintech credit seems to penetrate market segments not serviced by banks; thus, it plays a complementary role, however only in emerging economies. Bigtech companies compete even more with banks and push some banking offers out of the market, both in emerging and developed economies. Furthermore, we show that domestic and privately-owned banks are more negatively affected by competition from technology-based lending, particularly bigtech, than foreign banks. Thus, bigtech lending may be treated as a serious competition for banks' relationship lending based on soft credit information processing, traditionally provisioned by local banks.     

Fintech in the time of COVID−19: Technological adoption during crises

We document the effects of the COVID−19 pandemic on digital finance and fintech adoption. Drawing on mobile application data from a globally representative sample, we find that the spread of COVID− 19 and related government lockdowns led to a sizeable increase in the rate of finance app downloads. We then analyze factors that may have driven this effect on the demand−side and better understand the “winners” from this digital acceleration on the supply−side. Our overall results suggest that traditional incumbents saw the largest growth in their digital offerings during the initial period, but that “BigTech” companies and newer fintech providers ultimately outperformed them over time. Finally, we drill−down further on the adoption of fintech apps pertaining to both the asset and liability side of the traditional bank balance sheet, to explore the implications that the accelerated trends in digitization may have for the future landscape of financial intermediation.     

Social capital and access to informal finance – evidence from Chinese private firms

This study investigates how firms’ social capital affects their access to informal finance. We argue that social capital helps reduce information asymmetry, increase trust between related parties and enforce lending contracts, so it has positive effects on firms’ access to informal finance. Using novel survey data of Chinese private firms, we find that firms with more social capital have more access to informal finance with lower costs. Further tests show that the effect of social capital is more significant when firms are located in regions with less developed market and lower community’s social capital and during the 2008 financial crisis.     

基于复杂网络视角的金融科技风险传染研究

大数据、云计算、人工智能等新兴技术逐步改变金融生态,金融科技成为传统金融业提效降本的动力源泉.机遇与风险并存,金融科技的加入是否对传统金融造成风险冲击成为重要的研究课题.本文基于复杂网络视角,采用TENET方法搭建以金融科技、银行和证券机构为主体的风险关联网络,融合PMFG极大平面过滤图法,分析金融科技同传统金融主体的风险传染关系,在此基础上提出了关键性风险路径的识别方法.研究结果表明:相较于银行与证券,金融科技的内外部风险传染性最强;金融危机加强了风险传染的跨部门属性;风险传染以规模、业务相近的直接渠道为主,对关键性路径的识别有助于挖掘金融科技机构的潜在风险点.监管当局应加强对金融科技机构的宏微观审慎管理,识别同部门与跨部门的风险传染路径,优化监管效率.     

金融科技布局、银行信贷风险与经营绩效——来自商业银行与科技企业战略合作的证据

商业银行通过布局金融科技进行的金融服务创新,已成为深化金融供给侧结构性改革的重要举措。本文通过手工搜集2005—2019年323家商业银行与科技企业战略合作的数据,研究银行布局金融科技如何影响其信贷风险与经营绩效。结果表明：(1)银行布局金融科技战略能降低银行信贷风险,提高银行经营绩效;(2)银行布局金融科技通过提高其自身创新能力与竞争力从而降低银行的信贷风险水平;(3)银行布局金融科技,通过降低信贷风险、提升普惠金融服务、提高运营管理能力与拓展中间业务这四个渠道提高了银行经营绩效;(4)全国性银行发展金融科技使其信贷风险水平得到降低,资本充足率低的银行通过布局金融科技降低信贷风险的效果更强。同时,信用贷款比重越高的银行通过发展金融科技降低信贷风险、提高经营绩效的效果更加明显。本文研究有助于理解商业银行顺势而为所进行的金融科技布局的微观经济后果,也为进一步完善金融服务实体经济相关政策提供参考。     

Liquidity crisis,relationship lending and corporate finance

This paper investigates the consequences of the liquidity shocks in wholesale funding markets during the 2007–2009 financial crisis on bank lending and corporate financing. We show that banks that relied more heavily on wholesale funding contracted lending more severely than banks that relied more on insured deposits. We then examine the effects of loan contraction on the financial positions of publicly traded firms. We find that both during and after the crisis, the change in leverage of bank-dependent firms is less than that of firms with access to public debt markets. In addition, bank-dependent firms rely more on cash than net equity issuance to finance operations. We also find that firms with established bank lending relationships weather the crisis better. Such firms are able to attain higher levels of leverage during the crisis, add to their cash holdings, secure new bank credit, and achieve higher profitability as a result.     

公益性国有土地使用权收回的法律性质与补偿模式

当前金融与科技融合驱动下的新经济浪潮逐渐拉开帷幕,传统的高校金融人才、科技人才培养范式在新形势下都发生着深刻变化,形成了一场由传统教育到实践创新的系统性变革。新时代高校金融科技人才培养的实践创新与体系重构,是中国提升金融科技复合型人才质量的重要突破口。本文从新时代中国高校金融科技人才培养的现状及问题出发,分析高校金融科技人才培养的实践内容,并进一步提出中国高校金融科技人才培养与发展的创新要求及实现路径。本文认为充分发挥金融与科技在高校人才培养上的深度融合作用,着力培养具有国际视野、能够适应时代竞争的金融科技创新人才,成为现阶段中国高校人才培养的重要努力方向。     

Lender Automation and Racial Disparities in Credit Access

Process automation reduces racial disparities in credit access by enabling smaller loans, broadening banks' geographic reach, and removing human biases from decision making. We document these findings in the context of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), where private lenders faced no credit risk but decided which firms to serve. Black-owned firms obtained PPP loans primarily from automated fintech lenders, especially in areas with high racial animus. After traditional banks automated their loan processing procedures, their PPP lending to Black-owned firms increased. Our findings cannot be fully explained by racial differences in loan application behaviors, preexisting banking relationships, firm performance, or fraud rates.     

Bank competition,concentration and EU SME cost of debt

Despite the plentiful debate on the effects of bank competition on SME access to finance and growth, only few studies have explored the impacts on SME cost of debt. This study examines how bank market power affects the credit costs of SMEs by using unique matched SME-bank data from 17 EU countries. We show that bank market power reduces the cost of debt for SMEs. Such a favorable effect is stronger for SMEs that are less informationally transparent, and in the economies subject to less credit information depth and business extent of disclosure. These findings support the Information-based Hypothesis, whereby market power motivates banks to invest in soft information acquisition and to build lending relationships to reduce information costs. In addition, we show that despite the favorable effects of relationship lending brought by bank market power, SME credit conditions worsen in a more concentrated banking market.     

Peer effects in financial economics: A literature survey

The paper reviews the growing literature on peer effects in finance from theoretical and empirical viewpoints. In particular, we assess the importance of peer behavior on firms’ financial policies, analyze the channels through which they operate, and gauge their magnitude. We particularly review empirical works on herding and peer effects in two subfields of finance: corporate finance and the financial markets. We also discuss the results of many relevant peer-reviewed academic studies and provide research and policy implications. The main conclusion is that peer effects are important in shaping investor and firm decisions. The most critical problem in the peer effect literature is employing an identification strategy to ensure that results are not driven by endogeneity. The paper also discusses ways to address this identification issue and provides a future research agenda.     

Seeing is important: the usefulness of video information in P2P

P2P lending is an important research subject of rising internet finance research. This paper uses unique data from Renrendai, a leading platform in China, to test the influence of video information on P2P lending behavior. Results suggest that, first, the lower the borrower's credit rating is, the more likely they are to provide video information. Second, compared to the video‐information‐absent borrowers, the otherwise borrowers can get easier access to a loan and offer a lower interest rate. These results indicate that compared to text messages, video information can increase the borrower's creditworthiness and reduce the transaction risk. Thereupon seeing is important in online P2P lending. Third, when the borrower's credit rating is lower, the video effect is significant. The study makes sense in terms of the enrichment of P2P lending literature and the enlightenment on decision‐making of both lenders and borrowers.     

宏观经济政策与微观企业行为——拓展会计与财务研究新领域

本文首先回顾国际主流会计学术研究近年来遇到的挑战与质疑,然后提出以宏观经济政策与微观企业行为互动为基础的会计与财务研究框架,并以货币政策变动对企业融资、会计选择、经营业绩的影响为例说明这个框架对会计与财务研究可能产生的影响。本文认为结合宏观经济政策与微观企业行为互动作用的研究可能拓展会计与财务研究的新领域。     

Corporate finance theory: Introduction to special issue

Theoretical research in corporate finance is critical for our understanding of real-world phenomena, for interpreting empirical results, and for deriving policy implications. We discuss the benefits and limitations of research in corporate finance theory and link them to the nine articles in this special issue on “Corporate Finance Theory.” We provide a perspective on the nine articles in this special issue, and outline our perception of how future research may evolve. We also review several themes that emerge out of the articles, which we think deserve more attention from theorists going forward: interactions between financial markets and corporate finance and dynamic models of corporate decisions, such as capital structure and managerial compensation.     

关系型贷款与中小企业融资

本文认为中小企业融资难的根本原因在于其信息的不可得性和不可控性。文章简要介绍了国外银行开发的多种形式的贷款技术,着重分析了“关系型贷款”(相对于其他形式贷款而言)能更好服务于中小企业融资的原因。最后,文章指出了“关系型贷款”在实际运用过程中存在的问题,并就“关系型贷款”在我国中小企业融资中的推行提出了相关政策建议。     

中国金融科技监管沙盒机制设计研究

本文旨在从设立中国金融科技监管沙盒的必要性、可行性分析、机制设计等角度,探讨如何识别有价值的创新、缩短金融科技企业的创新周期并及早发现和化解潜在风险等问题.本文发现,金融科技新业态更具有颠覆性创新特征,采用传统金融监管框架可能会抑制创新,而金融科技监管沙盒是帮助平衡金融科技创新与风险的有效手段.建议参考中国香港的沙盒模...     

Overcoming spatial stratification of fintech inclusion: Inferences from across Chinese provinces to guide policy makers

Few studies have quantitatively analyzed the causes of the uneven development of fintech inclusion. We explore the factors influencing regional differences in China's fintech inclusion by focusing on the influencing factors' spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Fuzzy best-worst, standard deviation ellipse, and geographically temporally weighted regression methodologies were used to investigate the spatiotemporal evolution and influencing factors for 2011–2019. China's fintech inclusion has a higher persistent spatial imbalance in the east and a lower in the central and western regions. Regarding the spatial heterogeneity of influencing factors, we find that the effects of economic development, financial supervision, transportation convenience, population structure and education level show obvious east-west differences. Regarding temporal heterogeneity, we find over our period that the impacts of economic development and financial supervision on fintech inclusion changed from negative to positive, with the positive effects of education level and population structure decreasing. We offer a framework for measuring regional fintech inclusion and practical policy suggestions for promoting coordinated development.     

The fintech gender gap

Can fintech close the gender gap in access to financial services? Using novel survey data for 28 countries, this paper finds a large and ubiquitous ‘fintech gender gap’: while 29% of men use fintech products, only 21% of women do. This difference exceeds the gender gap in bank account ownership at traditional financial institutions. While country characteristics and individual-level controls explain about a third of the fintech gender gap, the residual gap declines by 60% when accounting for gender differences in the willingness to use new financial technology, the suitability of fintech products, and the willingness to use fintech entrants if they offer cheaper products. The paper concludes by discussing drivers of differences in attitudes and implications for policy to foster financial inclusion with new technology.     

A Comparative Literature Survey of Islamic Finance and Banking

There has been large-scale growth in Islamic finance and banking in Muslim countries and around the world during the last twenty years. This growth is influenced by factors including the introduction of broad macroeconomic and structural reforms in financial systems, the liberalization of capital movements, privatization, the global integration of financial markets, and the introduction of innovative and new Islamic products. Islamic finance is now reaching new levels of sophistication. However, a complete Islamic financial system with its identifiable instruments and markets is still very much at an early stage of evolution. Many problems and challenges relating to Islamic instruments, financial markets, and regulations must be addressed and resolved. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive comparative review of the literature on the Islamic financial system. Specifically, we discuss the basic features of the Islamic finance and banking. We also introduce Islamic financial instruments in order to compare them to existing Western financial instruments and discuss the legal problems that investors in these instruments may encounter. The paper also gives a preliminary empirical assessment of the performance of Islamic banking and finance, and highlights the regulations, challenges and problems in the Islamic banking market.