Loan Portfolio Quality Research Articles

The impact of minority foreign ownership and controlling shareholder on bank risk and performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of minority foreign ownership on the risk taking behavior and performance of domestic banks in a country where foreign ownership restrictions are imposed. Design/methodology/approach – Mainly controlled by family business groups, the authors examine the extent by which the presence and the level of foreign ownership and voting rights affect domestic bank behavior. Findings – The results show that compared with those purely domestic-owned, banks with foreign shareholdings have lower levels of insider lending and have higher loan portfolio quality. Moreover, the authors find an increase in foreign voting rights effective in raising risk-adjusted returns and in lowering default risk. This positive effect on performance, however, ceases at higher levels of control manifested by the majority domestic shareholder. Research limitations/implications – Overall, this study shows that there are significant benefits derived from minority foreign shareholder presence in Philippine domestic banks. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the debate of whether it may be beneficial to reduce or completely lift the foreign ownership restrictions imposed on the banks in the country.

A New Index of the Business Environment for Microfinance

This paper describes a new index of the quality of the business environment for microfinance institutions (the Global Microscope on the Microfinance Business Environment). Regressions are used to validate the index by linking it and its subcomponents to microfinance outcomes. The main findings are that the components of the index related to the supporting institutional framework are strongly linked to measures of microfinance penetration (such as microfinance borrowers as a share of total population). Components related to the framework for regulation and supervision are more strongly linked to outcomes at the microfinance institution level, including loan portfolio quality, financial self-sufficiency, average loan size, and the share of lending to women. Many, but not all, of these relationships are robust to using instrumental variables estimation in which a country's general stringency with respect to financial regulation is used as an instrument for the index and its components.

The Determinants of NPLs in Emerging Europe, 2000-2011

The emerging Europe has been hardest hit by the surge in the non-performing loans (NPLs) in the aftermath of the global financial turbulence and the crisis-induced recession. The surge in the NPLs generated a severe banking distress, and left a legacy of a debt overhang that dramatically constrained bank lending and served as a drag on economic growth in the post-crisis period. We quantitatively study the determinants of loan losses in static and dynamic panel models with a focus on the linkages between the macro-financial vulnerabilities and a wide range of bank specific variables in 20 emerging European countries during 2000-2011. Our results indicate that the NPL dynamics have been particularly sensitive to real GDP growth, and inflation, while bank profitability as a proxy for management quality plays a significant role in constraining loan defaults. By contrast, higher lending rates may lead to adverse selection problems, and hence reduces loan quality. There is also some weak evidence that rapid credit growth as a measure of excessive risk taking in lending serves as a precursor to worsening loan portfolio quality. We observe, based on a unique data set, that banks in the region increasingly employ advanced risk management regimes (Internal Rating Based, IRB) with the potential to better monitor and evaluate loan quality and hence, rein on problem loans.

Real estate market and financial stability in US metropolitan areas: A dynamic model with spatial effects

This paper investigates spatio-temporal variations in ex-post credit risk in the United States, as a function of real estate prices, loan purchases made by government sponsored enterprises, and a set of local characteristics during the recent housing boom and bust.We model bank's non-performing loans as a first-order dynamic panel data regression model with group-specific effects and spatial autoregressive errors. To estimate this model, we develop an ad-hoc generalized method of moments procedure which consists of augmenting moments proposed by the panel literature to estimate short T, pure dynamic panels, with a set of quadratic conditions in the disturbances. Results on estimation of the empirical model point at the negative impact of real estate prices on non-performing loans. Further, our results show that a rise in the number of real estate mortgages backed by government-sponsored enterprises increases non-performing loans, thus deteriorating the quality of banks' loan portfolio.

Determinants of syndicated lending in European banks and the impact of the financial crisis

Syndicated lending is a widely practiced alternative to traditional bilateral lending and within Europe the syndicated loan market increased significantly during the 2000s. Using a dataset consisting of 4166 European banks, the authors examine the factors that determine the bank's willingness to use syndicated lending rather than traditional lending during the period 2000–2010. The paper finds that syndicated lending was an alternative to bilateral loans when banks were targeting growth or looking to utilize potential capital surpluses. Syndicated lending was also used to improve the returns and credit quality of the bank's loan portfolios. However, in the post crisis period, European banks are less interested in syndicated loan markets and larger banks, especially, those with strong capital bases, are refraining from syndicated lending.

Effectiveness of Loan Portfolio Management in Rural SACCOS: Evidence from Tanzania

This article uses 496 loans from ABC rural SACCOS located in the Northern zone of Tanzania to describe the effectiveness of loan’s portfolio management. The data analysis is done by using the multivariate regression, descriptive and qualitative methods. The data for this study was collected at the end of May 2013. The findings reveal that women constituted 52.6% of the loan portfolio. Also the doubtful and bad loans were 51 and 31 million TZS which was more than 10% of the loan portfolio. The findings show loans were aged into 4 classes and the loans aging was not very effective because loans of different ages were classified in a single class. The results from the regression analysis reveal that the quality of loan portfolio was positively influenced by the loan size while the influence of gender and location of the borrowers were not significant. Moreover, ABC rural SACCOS used portfolio diversification, collateral, guarantors, letter from the village/ward government offices and the affidavit from the lawyer as credits risk mitigation techniques. The findings also revealed that fluctuation of the price of agricultural produce threatened the quality of loan portfolio. This article recommends that ABC rural SACCOS should seek the effective insurance services, use the effective software for loan portfolio management, search the market for agriculture produce, write off non repaid loans, enhance the repayment of overdue loans and revise the loan classes and maturity in order to improve the quality of the loan portfolio in the SACCOS.

Il Sistema Bancario di Fronte ai Problemi Economici

Abstract The deteriorating reasons of banking portfolio loans and some necessary measures for the improvement of this situation will be main topics of this article. The corruption in the banking system, is a phenomenon that has passed unobserved, but for our opinion is very often. Non professional loan officers, who lack the essential knowledge of identifying the clients, are common among the Banks of Albania; The new banking system, appears with the old problems of expansion of loan portfolio during 2005-2007,without the bank capacity to manage them and that for sure will be accompanied with influx of many clients with problems. The objective reason is also economic situation of our country and our region that for sure will reflect in quality of loans portfolio; The measures that are important to take are: a reform in banking system for what it concerned structure management in charge of loans giving. The loan officers reward should be connected with quality of portfolio management. Bank of Albania should enforce banks to spend more for training the loan officer. It may organize itself the training courses by raising a training center. It should control on-site banks more frequently. Should pay attention on giving new loans, which will improve gradually the quality of loan portfolio. Despite the situation must not restraint the loan process in bank. Keywords : Nonperforming loans, loan officer; corruption; financial crisis.

A Forward Looking Approach for Assessing the Loan Portfolio Quality of Commercial Banks

In this study, I provide a forward looking approach for assessing the loan portfolio quality of commercial banks. I first develop an accrual reliability categorization for financial institutions and show that existing findings for non-financial firms extend to financial firms. I next demonstrate how supplementing the information in accruals leads to significantly improved assessment of accrual quality. Focusing on commercial banks’ loan portfolios, I supplement information in accruals with footnote disclosures regarding loan portfolio concentrations and regional economic indicators. I show that the resulting loan portfolio quality index (PQI) further isolates less reliable accruals and significantly improves the forecasting of future earnings and stock returns.

Macro-financial linkages in Egypt: A panel analysis of economic shocks and loan portfolio quality

This paper investigates macro-financial linkages in Egypt using two complementary methods, assessing the interaction between different macroeconomic aggregates and loan portfolio quality in a multivariate framework as well as through a panel vector autoregressive method that controls for bank-level characteristics. Using a panel of banks over 1993–2010, the authors find that a positive shock to capital inflows and growth in gross domestic product improves banks’ loan portfolio quality, and that the effect is fairly similar in magnitude using the multivariate and panel vector autoregressive frameworks. In contrast, higher lending rates may lead to adverse selection problems and hence to a drop in portfolio quality. The paper also reports that a larger market share of foreign banks in the industry improves loan quality.

Russian Banking System: A Basel II-Like Approach in a Basel-III Framework

Even if the Basel III comes into effect on 1st January 2014, the banks will have to implement only the capital requirements. The liquidity requirements that are the core of the Basel III framework are only in future plans for the Russian banks' reforms. Bank of Russia may be avoiding those requirements because of the bad quality of Russian banks loan and deposit portfolios.

Russian Banking Sector in Q1 2013

In Q1 2013 the trend of slowing growth in the credit portfolio of banks was sustained. In the retail segment of credit market there was started deterioration of the Bank’s loan portfolio quality. Profitability of the banking business is getting reduced for the second consecutive quarter, which is driven by the growing deductions to reserves and higher cost of the resource base.

Relationship lending, default rate and loan portfolio quality

This article empirically verifies the existence of a connection between the relationship-oriented model and the quality of the loan portfolio, by using alternative risk measures to previous studies. Consistently with earlier literature, bank size, distance and intensity of labour are used as proxies for the relationship lending model. The main results demonstrate that the relationship lending variables are all significant contributory factors to the loan portfolio quality. Robustness tests, conducted using intermediate risk measures (Doubtful Loan Rate (DLR), Past Due Loan Rate (PDLR)), confirm the results. Our findings are consistent with the relationship lending literature, but we extend to Default Rate (DR) measurement, a new role in terms of a banking model to create loans and manage credit risk. Finally, banking literature can take advantage of the DR indicator as a proxy for the quality of loan portfolio, and we consider its strong relationship to the intermediation model chosen.

Earnings and capital management and signaling: the use of loan-loss provisions by European banks

This paper investigates the relationship between loan-loss provisions (LLPs) and earnings management in the context of the capital adequacy of Euro Area (EA) banks versus non-EA credit institutions. This paper also examines whether LLPs signal managements’ expectations concerning future bank profits to investors. Additionally, this paper traces the role of bank regulations and creditor protection systems in explaining income smoothing. Evidence drawn from the 1996 to 2006 period indicates that LLPs do reflect changes in the expected quality of a bank's loan portfolio for both groups of banks, and that earnings management is an important determinant of LLPs for EA intermediaries, whereas non-EA credit institutions use LLPs to signal private information to outsiders. The paper also finds that higher protection of creditors’ rights significantly reduces the incentives to smooth earnings for EA banks. During the recent financial crisis, EA bank managers are much more concerned with their credit portfolio quality and do not use LLPs for discretionary purposes, whereas LLPs at non-EA banks are used to smooth income more than for the purposes of managing capital ratios or conveying private information about future performance to the market.

Macroeconomic Determinants Of Loan Portfolio Credit Risk In Banks

The credit risk is one of the main risks in commercial banks and the ability to manage it meaningly affect banks’ stability. This risk arises due to the particular reasons related with the possibility to lose loans if the debtors are not able to meet their financial obligations. When making the decisions of financing the loan applicants banks use the credit risk assessment models that allow to estimate the probability of the potential borrowers to default on their loan commitments. The main goal of managing the credit risk in banks is to compound the loan portfolio of the acceptable risk level. According to Derelioglu and Gurgen (2011) the credit risk analysis aims to decrease future losses by estimating the potential risk and eliminating the new credit proposal if the risk is higher than a defined tolerance value. In this respect, it is essential to identify the main factors causing this risk in order to manage it. When assessing the credit risk of every company banks usually analyze the financial data and some qualitative factors as the independent variables in the statistical credit risk assessment models. But changing the credit policy in banks and pricing the credits it is very important to predict the quality of loan portfolio in future. The problem can be summarized as finding the statistical methods that relates the proportion of doubtful and non-performing credits in the loan portfolio (dependent variable) with the set of explanatory variables (macroeconomic information of a country). The aim of this research is to find the macroeconomic determinants that significantly influence the changes of loan portfolio credit risk in banks and to develop the statistical model for prediction of the proportion of doubtful and non-performing loans. The scientific literature analysis results confirmed the influence of macroeconomic conditions on credit risk of debtors in banks and presented that the changes in quality of loan portfolio in banks depend on GDP, inflation, interest rates, money supply, industrial production index, current account balance and other. In empirical research 22 EU countries were grouped into 3 clusters according to their similarity in changes of the doubtful and non-performing loans percentage in banks. The set of 20 independent variables as factors determining the changes in amount of doubtful and non-performing loans was created. These variables were calculated from 9 macroeconomic indicators of 3 years. The model was developed to classify the countries into clusters applying the logistic regression, factor analysis and probit methods. The classification accuracy is 100%. The predictions of doubtful and non-performing loans indexes are based on the analysis of the scores of extracted 5 factors as new independent variables. The multiple regression and polynomial regression methods were applied for the index predictions in clusters. The developed model in this research enables to predict the percentage of doubtful and non-performing loans in banks with the average 98,06% accuracy. The research has confirmed that the amount of doubtful and non-performing loans in banks highly depends on macroeconomic changes in a country. The model can warn the banks in advance if the significant increase in the loan portfolio credit risk after 2 years is highly possible.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.23.5.1890

Macro-Financial Linkages in Egypt: A Panel Analysis of Economic Shocks and Loan Portfolio Quality

This paper investigates macro-financial linkages in Egypt using two complementary methods, assessing the interaction between different macroeconomic aggregates and loan portfolio quality in a multivariate framework as well as through a panel vector autoregressive method that controls for bank-level characteristics. Using a panel of banks over 1993-2010, the authors find that a positive shock to capital inflows and growth in gross domestic product improves banks’ loan portfolio quality, and that the effect is fairly similar in magnitude using the multivariate and panel vector autoregressive frameworks. In contrast, higher lending rates may lead to adverse selection problems and hence to a drop in portfolio quality. The paper also reports that a larger market share of foreign banks in the industry improves loan quality.

Do government owned banks trade market power for slack?

The ‘Quiet Life Hypothesis (QLH)’ posits that banks with market power have less incentives to maximize revenues and minimize cost. Especially government owned banks with a public mandate precluding profit maximization might succumb to a quiet life. We use a unified approach that simultaneously measures market power and efficiency to test the quiet life hypothesis of German savings banks. We find that average local market power declined between 1996 and 2006. Cost and profit efficiency remained constant. Nonparametric correlations are consistent with a quiet life regarding cost efficiency but not regarding profit efficiency. The quiet life on the cost side is negatively correlated with bank size, quality of loan portfolio and local per capita income. The last result indicates that the quiet cost life is therefore potentially due to benevolent excess consumption of local input factors by public savings banks.

Microfinance in India: Small, Ostensibly Rigid and Safe

Grameen replicators in India, using a for-profit Non-Banking Finance Company legal form, have grown rapidly in terms of client numbers. Loan sizes are relatively small compared to per capita income, while portfolio quality was until recently very high. There is evidence in field of multiple borrowing, with clients borrowing simultaneously from multiple sources including micro-finance institutions. We build a model of the microfinance sector that explains why such multiple borrowings result optimally in small loan sizes and high portfolio quality.

Business cycle effects on commercial bank loan portfolio performance in developing economies

This paper studies the effects of business cycles on the performance of commercial bank loan portfolios across major developing economies in the period 1996–2008. We measure loan performance via loan loss provisions (that is, recognized expenses related to expected losses in bank income statements). Our results indicate that while economic growth is the main driver of loan portfolio performance, interest rates have second-order effects. Furthermore, we find the relationship between loan loss provisions and economic growth to be highly non-linear only under extreme economic stress: GDP growth needs to decline by more than 6 percentage points (pp, in absolute terms) in order to generate an increase in loan loss provisions equivalent to median emerging market bank profits; while a decline of more than 10pp in growth implies significant capital losses, of at least 20 percent, for the median emerging market bank. In addition, we find higher loan loss provisions are associated with private sector leverage, poor loan portfolio quality, and lack of banking system penetration and capitalization.

Trust in Public Institutions over the Business Cycle

This paper estimates the amount of tightening in bank commercial and industrial (C&I) loan rates during the financial crisis. After controlling for loan characteristics and bank fixed effects, as of 2010:Q1, the average C&I loan spread was 66 basis points or 23 percent above normal. From about 2005 to 2008, the loan spread averaged 23 basis points below normal. Thus, from the unusually loose lending conditions in 2007 to the much tighter conditions in 2010:Q1, the average loan spread increased by about 1 percentage point. I find that large and medium-sized banks tightened their loan rates more than small banks; while small banks tended to tighten less, they always charged more. Using loan size to proxy for bank-dependent borrowers, while small loans tend to have a higher spread than large loans, I find that small loans actually tightened less than large loans in both absolute and percentage terms. Hence, the results do not indicate that bank-dependent borrowers suffered more from bank tightening than large borrowers. The channels through which banks tightened loan rates include reducing the discounts on large loans and raising the risk premium on more risky loans. There also is evidence that noncommitment loans were priced significantly higher than commitment loans at the height of the liquidity shortfall in late 2007 and early 2008, but this premium dropped to zero following the introduction of emergency liquidity facilities by the Federal Reserve. In a cross section of banks, certain bank characteristics are found to have significant effects on loan prices, including loan portfolio quality, capital ratios, and the amount of unused loan commitments. These findings provide evidence on the supply-side effect of loan pricing.

Business Cycle Effects on Commercial Bank Loan Portfolio Performance in Developing Economies

This paper studies the business cycle effects on the performance of commercial bank loan portfolios across major developing economies in the period 1996-2008. We measure loan performance via loan loss provisions (that is, recognized expenses related to expected losses in bank income statements). Our results indicate that while economic growth is the main driver of loan portfolio performance, interest rates have second-order effects. Furthermore, we find the relationship between loan loss provisions and economic growth to be highly non-linear only under extreme economic stress: GDP growth needs to decline by more than 6 percentage points (pp, in absolute terms) in order to generate an increase in loan loss provisions equivalent to the median emerging market bank profitability; while a decline of more than 10 pp in growth implies significant capital losses, of at least 20 percent, for the median emerging market bank. In addition, we find higher loan loss provisions are associated with private sector leverage, poor loan portfolio quality, and lack of banking system penetration and capitalization.