印度小额信贷危机的监管策略及对中国的启示

2010年MFI因高利率放贷和强制性收款而导致安德拉邦居民的自杀事件,引发了印度的小额信贷危机。应该如何对小额信贷机构进行监管,使其持续为农村地区输入资金的同时,还能使借款人获得足够的保护,这是印度和中国都需要思考的问题。     

关于小额信贷机构降低利率的初步讨论

以普惠金融为使命的小额信贷机构,为了获得竞争优势、扩大覆盖范围、防止行业危机,有降低其利率的意愿,而利率最终能否下降则主要取决于小额信贷机构能否降低其操作成本.研究发现,操作成本随着经营年限的增长而持续下降,而小额信贷机构自身可通过更符合客户需求的产品设计和更有助于提高雇员效率的流程改进来加速利率下降的过程.     

小额信贷商业化中的目标偏移——一个理论模型及西部小额贷款公司的经验研究

在商业化改革的趋势下,一些小额信贷机构的客户群上移,出现了目标偏移。本文通过建立理论模型,论证了在两类借款人交易成本存在较大差异的情况下,小额信贷机构的信贷目标定位对目标偏移问题的影响。利用西部小额贷款公司调研数据,本文验证了小额信贷商业化中的目标偏移问题以及小额信贷机构目标定位的影响。最后,本文提出差异化补贴、制定贷款对象监控机制以及考核社会绩效等建议,以期解决我国小额贷款公司的目标偏移问题。     

信贷需求：小额信贷覆盖率的决定因素之一——来自中国北方四县调查的证据

过去对小额信贷项目覆盖率的研究集中在供给方面,本文应用大规模农户调查的数据,从需求方面研究了中国三个小额信贷项目覆盖率低的问题。研究发现,在中国贫困地区试验的孟加拉乡村银行模式的小额信贷项目不能自动地瞄准贫困地区的贫困人口,许多贫困农户将自身排除在小额信贷市场之外。本文的结论是,尽管中国的小额信贷试点项目没有能自动瞄准贫困地区的贫困户,它们仍然对中国的扶贫做出了积极贡献。为了提高小额信贷项目对贫困人群的覆盖率,需要通过减少对贫困人口的其他约束、依照贫困人群的需要定制小额贷款产品等方式来提高贫困农户对小额贷款的需求。     

信贷需求:小额信贷覆盖率的决定因素之一-来自中国北方四县调查的证据

过去对小额信贷项目覆盖率的研究集中在供给方面,本文应用大规模农户调查的数据,从需求方面研究了中国三个小额信贷项目覆盖率低的问题。研究发现,在中国贫困地区试验的孟加拉乡村银行模式的小额信贷项目不能自动地瞄准贫困地区的贫困人口,许多贫困农户将自身排除在小额信贷市场之外。本文的结论是,尽管中国的小额信贷试点项目没有能自动瞄准贫困地区的贫困户,它们仍然对中国的扶贫做出了积极贡献。为了提高小额信贷项目对贫困人群的覆盖率,需要通过减少对贫困人口的其他约束、依照贫困人群的需要定制小额贷款产品等方式来提高贫困农户对小额贷款的需求。     

商洛市非充分竞争条件下利率定价与信贷投入调查

理论上研究以及国际实践认为,高利率有利于弱势群体得到贷款支持。对商洛市农村金融市场展开调查,从非完全竞争条件出发探讨影响利率定价的因素以及利率定价与信贷投入的关系。调研结果表明,农村金融市场的垄断性造成利率定价偏高,借款人对于利率定价改革产生错误认识。提出建立合理的贷款利率定价机制并严格执行,加大市场化利率改革的宣传力度等政策建议,以期改善农村信贷市场效率。     

对发展我国农村小额信贷的思考

金融是现代经济的核心和命脉,同样农村金融也是社会主义新农村建设的核心和命脉[1]。我国的农村小额信贷主要服务与农村地区的弱势群体即被金融机构排除在外的广大农户,虽然我国的小额信贷在现阶段取得了一定的成果,但是其可持续发展仍然存在许多因素的制约,主要有资金供需失衡,小额信贷自身的不足,缺乏有效的风险分担机制等。根据国内外小额信贷成功的事例,我国应采取拓展多元化小额信贷资金来源,加快利率市场化改革等措施来促进我国小额信贷的可持续发展。     

中国农村小额信贷公司发展中的问题和对策研究

作为中国农村金融机构的重要组成部分,农村小额信贷公司在新农村建设过程中发挥了积极而深远的影响。其成立发展主要是帮扶金融弱势群体达到扶贫的目标。在新农村建设的关键历史时期,推动中国小额贷款公司的发展,必须走可持续性的发展模式。这不仅要求从观念上重视小额贷款公司可持续性发展,而且要求在运作机制上能够实现小额贷款公司的可持续,从小额贷款公司的风险、成本两方面进行合理的管理能够促使整个机构的可持续性,达到小额贷款公司的可持续发展目标。从目前情况看,国内的农村小额信贷公司还处在较低的水平,存在诸如资金供给能力不足、农村小额信贷公司财务自立能力较弱、过度行政干预加大经营风险、支农措施与农户需求有差距等问题。今后应着手完善小额信贷资金供给机制,利用市场定价机制实现持续经营,创造稳定的政策和加快小额信贷模式创新等措施,不断完善中国的农村小额信贷公司。     

国际小额信贷发展趋势及面临问题对我国的借鉴

长期以来,我国NGO小额信贷机构与国际小额信贷组织一直保持着互动与合作,国际小额信贷实践对于我国有重要借鉴意义。国际小额信贷机构在进入了制度主义发展模式后出现了一些具有普遍性的问题,如目标客户偏移、贷款利率过高等等。文章通过对比总结国内外小额信贷机构的发展以及实践中存在的突出问题,得出我国NGO小额信贷机构在运作机制上必须向制度主义转型;除此之外,我国小额信贷机构的持续经营还需要建立完善的外部支持体系,对此政府和小额信贷行业组织发挥着重要作用。     

完善小额信贷可持续发展的路径选择——以湍水头镇小额信贷项目为例

小额贷款为解决贫困,解决农民贷款难的问题,起到十分重要的作用。但是,如何实现小额信贷的可持续发展,又是开展小额信贷各国遇到的难题。文章以湍水头小额信贷实践为基础,对小额信贷可持续性进行探讨,探索完善小额信贷可持续发展的路径选择。     

Determinants of microcredit repayment in Portugal: analysis of borrowers,loans and business projects

Microcredit programs in Portugal represent a unique case for studying the microcredit repayment determinants in a developed country, as it experienced a financial hardship in 2008–2009, with economic and social consequences that led to unemployment crisis. This research examined the determinants of microcredit loan repayment based on a sample of 752 microcredit loans granted in Portugal by the National Association for the Right to Credit, adopting individual lending mechanisms and granting loans through partnerships with several credit institutions. This is the first study to ascertain the influence that a set of factors – grouped into three categories: borrowers’ individual characteristics; loan characteristics; and characteristics of business projects implemented by borrowers – has on the repayment ability of microcredit programs, in a developed country of the Eurozone. Moreover, this is the first study using an ordered logistic regression (OLR) in estimating the determinants of microcredit loan repayment. Similar to previous studies, married borrowers tend to repay loans faster as they tend to be more responsible than single borrowers. Nationality seems to be an issue as foreigners tends to default the repayment loans. Finally, those involved in manufacturing activities perform better than those involved in service activities in repaying their loans. This clearly indicates that in developed countries special attention needs to be provided to minority groups as well as market/supply conditions, which are not normally considered in less favored economic countries.     

Evaluating credit risk and loan performance in online Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending

Online Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending has emerged recently. This micro loan market could offer certain benefits to both borrowers and lenders. Using data from the Lending Club, which is one of the popular online P2P lending houses, this article explores the P2P loan characteristics, evaluates their credit risk and measures loan performances. We find that credit grade, debt-to-income ratio, FICO score and revolving line utilization play an important role in loan defaults. Loans with lower credit grade and longer duration are associated with high mortality rate. The result is consistent with the Cox Proportional Hazard test which suggests that the hazard rate or the likelihood of the loan default increases with the credit risk of the borrowers. Finally, we find that higher interest rates charged on the high-risk borrowers are not enough to compensate for higher probability of the loan default. The Lending Club must find ways to attract high FICO score and high-income borrowers in order to sustain their businesses.     

Heterogeneity of farm loan packaging term decisions: a finite mixture approach

This article revisits the minority borrowers’ discrimination issue in farm lending by departing from traditional loan approval-rejection or default rate-based analytical models to focus on loan packaging decisions. This study analyses such decisions using a Finite Mixture Model that optimally separates the borrowers into two sub-classes allowing for a priori unspecified heterogeneity in borrowers’ data, which has not been accounted for in previous loan discrimination analyses. Results show that non-white farm borrowers tend to receive larger loans among those in the lower loan latent class, but receive relatively lower loans in the larger loans borrower category. These farmers are also charged higher interest rates vis-à-vis their peers in both the low and high interest rate latent classes. This study’s results also indicate that male borrowers are accommodated with larger loans and longer maturities in all loan amount and maturity latent classes. This study validates the interplay among significant trends in loan packaging terms for racial and gender minority borrowers that seems logical from the lenders’ credit risk management perspective.     

Competitive equilibrium in the credit market under asymmetric information

We study a competitive credit market equilibrium in which all agents are risk neutral and lenders a priori unaware of borrowers' default probabilities. Admissible credit contracts are characterized by the credit granting probability, the loan quantity, the loan interest rate and the collateral required. The principal result is that in equilibrium lower risk borrowers pay higher interest rates than higher risk borrowers; moreover, the lower risk borrowers get more credit in equilibrium than they would with full information. No credit is rationed and collateral requirements are higher for the lower risk borrowers.     

Maximizing Behavior: Reconciling Neoclassical and X-Efficiency Approaches

International capital flows are constrained by a lack of complementary human capital, information asymmetries and transaction costs for small loan sizes. Extant research has provided a myriad of economic and cultural explanations of how microcredit has overcome these. Based on these, the paper develops a simple economic framework that accounts for these behavioral and institutional factors: a discontinuous marginal revenue curve and a U-shaped supply curve of capital for the microcredit environment. It then uses these analytical tools to explain capital flows and interest rates charged by traditional moneylenders. Finally, it uses these tools to present the growth of microcredit and the increase in financial flows and to explain why microcredit interest rates are lower than those of moneylenders, but higher than those of commercial banks to wealthier borrowers.     

Adverse selection as an explanation of credit rationing and different lender types

An adverse selection model is utilized to demonstrate that informational asymmetry may make it wealth optimal for the financial intermediary (FI) to credit ration and to rationalize the existence of different lenders in the credit market. The crucial assumption is that borrowers differ in their tolerance for a lender-imposed default penalty, the severity of which also varies with the lender. The credit rationing portion proves that the FI will: 1) be forced by a binding regulatory constraint to overinvest in capital; 2) ration its worst risk class borrowers; 3) establish its optimal loan interest rate on the basis of the average quality of its loans and the interest rate elasticity of the borrower demand in its best risk category; and 4) decrease the total loan volume and increase the loan interest rate due to an increase in the capital requirement, but the effect on the default risk quality of its loan portfolio is ambiguous. The existence result is that if a lender has a high default penalty, he can charge a lower rate and attract only “good” borrowers, i.e., heterogeneous lender types encourage the screening of borrowers and vice versa.     

CREDIT UNION MEMBER GROUP DOMINATION UNDER HIGH INTEREST RATE ENVIRONMENTS

Theoretical models for credit unions advocate that such organizations should pursue a neutral orientation in order to accommodate the conflicting interests of borrower members, who seek lower interest rates, and saver members, who look for higher returns on their savings. However, there is a lack of empirical support for such neutrality in high interest rate environments. This is because under such conditions, credit unions could accomplish their social mission by providing microcredit at a lower interest rate to local communities, thus becoming more borrower‐dominated. This paper investigates the member group domination of credit unions in Brazil, a country known for its high interest rates, and finds that the majority of credit unions (78.34%) are borrower‐dominated. This behavior becomes more pronounced when local interest rates rise, contradicting the predictions of neutrality‐seeking models. A percentage increase in the interest rate, increases about 5 times the likelihood of a CU becoming extreme borrower‐dominated. Besides interest rates, age, lower size, capital and lower efficiency of the credit unions are the main determinants of borrower domination.     

Parametric versus nonparametric methods in risk scoring: an application to microcredit

The importance of credit access to improve economic opportunities in developing markets is well established in the literature. However, there exists a strong need to mitigate adverse selection problems in microlending. A risk scoring model that more accurately predicts the likelihood of repayment of potential borrowers can help address this market imperfection and to benefit both lenders and borrowers. This paper compares the performance of nonparametric versus semiparametric and traditional parametric risk scoring models based on default probabilities. We show the advantages of relying on less structured, data-driven methods for risk scoring using both simulated data and data from credit loans granted to small and microenterprises in rural Peru. The estimation results indicate that nonparametric methods lead to a better evaluation of credit worthiness and can help prevent including potential “bad” borrowers and excluding “good” borrowers from sensitive microcredit markets.     

问询函监管与银行信贷决策的改善*

近年来,证券交易所推行的问询函监管逐渐成为保障和改善上市公司信息披露质量的重要机制,其实施效果自然成为监管者和学者关注的焦点。本文从银行的角度研究问询函监管对外部利益相关者的溢出效应,具体考察问询函监管对银行信贷决策的影响。研究发现,在公司被出具问询函后,银行的贷款利率显著更高,贷款期限显著更短,银行贷款要求提供担保的可能性和比例更高。进一步研究发现,当公司处于信息风险和信用风险相对较高的情境中,或银行对信息风险和信用风险较为关注的情况下,银行贷款利率上升幅度更加显著,不过,贷款期限、担保要求等非价格条款并没有显著差异。同时,问询函对银行信贷决策的影响在银企之间存在较强的信息不对称时更加显著。最后,本文发现公司收到问询函以后,分析师预测分歧度显著提高,这表明信息风险是问询函监管影响银行信贷决策的一个可能渠道。     

Does microcredit increase borrowers’ savings? A fuzzy regression discontinuity design approach

Microcredit has expanded rapidly in recent years but its effect at the household level is still controversial. This paper uses a unique data-set collected from 69 villages in Bangladesh to estimate the effect of participation in microcredit programs on household savings. A regression discontinuity design (RDD) is used to identify the credit effect. To justify the validity of RDD, we test the discontinuities in the conditional density of the forcing variable (in our case, household land), as suggested by McCrary. We do not find any substantial evidence of manipulation of forcing variable at the threshold to invalidate the RDD. Our results show that access to credit increases savings of the borrowers.