Search

The announcement of a bank loan by a borrowing firm has been shown to have a positive effect on the market value of the borrower’s claims. This is consistent with a lender’s implied endorsement of the borrower––an endorsement that has value to the borrower. In this paper, we investigate whether the lender is able to extract a premium loan rate or certification premium in return. We find empirical evidence that in the absence of collateral reputable lenders are able to exact a certification premium.

This paper develops the implications of heterogeneous bank loans for borrower and lender behaviour in a competitive bank loan market by considering the own funds-loan ratio as the ‘non-price’ loan term. It is shown that in equilibrium each bank will ration its loan to borrowers by providing them with the smaller loan and requiring the higher own funds-loan ration than they would desire at the equilibrium loan rate. Moreover, restrictive monetary policy that raises the opportunity cost of granting loans decreases the loan size and increases the own funds-loan ratio, but its effect on the loan rate and credit rationing remains ambiguous. Thus credit rationing may decrease as a result of restrictive monetary policy.

We determine the loan interest rate policy of a lender who is better informed about a client than other potential lenders. The informational advantage possessed by the informed lender derives from the durability of information acquired as a result of an extant relationship. Given heterogeneous potential loan rate offers to the client by competitive lenders and client search costs, the incumbent lender's policy of loan interest rate offers is examined. We show that the optimal loan rate will exceed the incumbent lender's cost of funds and will exceed the average offer of competing lenders. The potential lenders will offer loan rates that are exceeded by their cost of funds, implying immediate losses in order to attract the client and to thereby earn expected profits in the future. Finally, we show that the expected remaining duration of a lender-client relationship is decreasing in the existing length of the relationship. Thus, clients that have been with a particular lender longer will be more likely to leave and establish a relationship with another lender.