Credit-Scoring Methods (in English)

The paper reviews the best-developed and most frequently applied methods of credit scoring employed by commercial banks when evaluating loan applications. The authors concentrate on retail loans – applied research in this segment is limited, though there has been a sharp increase in the volume of loans to retail clients in recent years. Logit analysis is identified as the most frequent credit-scoring method used by banks. However, other nonparametric methods are widespread in terms of pattern recognition. The methods reviewed have potential for application in post-transition countries.banking sector, credit scoring, discrimination analysis, pattern recognition, retail loans

Retail credit survey, 1951

Retail trade ; Credit

When for-profits and not-for-profits compete: theory and empirical evidence from retail banking

We model competition in local deposit markets between for-profit and not-for-profit financial institutions. For-profit retail banks may offer a superior bundle of financial services, but not-for-profit (occupational) credit unions enjoy sponsor subsidies that allow them to capture a share of the local market. The model predicts that greater participation in credit unions in a given county will be associated with higher levels of retail-bank concentration. We find empirical evidence of this association. The ability of credit unions to affect local banking market structure supports the presumption of current banking antitrust analysis that retail banking markets remain local. We identify local economic factors that modulate the nature of competition between banks and credit unions, including income per capita and population density.Banks and banking

Consumer Credit Rates in the Eurozone: Evidence on the Emergence on a Single Retail Banking Market. ECRI Research Report No. 2, 1 January 2002

[From the Introduction] This study provides new evidence on the emergence of a single eurozone retail banking market with particular reference to consumer credit. Given the heterogeneous nature of consumer credit products in the eurozone, the authors reject the earlier proposition of the Cecchini study, which equates banking market integration with identical interest rates throughout the eurozone. The present study advocates the use of the co-integration methodology, which allows us to investigate integration in the presence of country-specific credit rates. The empirical results indicate only very limited evidence of an integrated retail banking market prior to 1 January 1999, pointing to the limited effectiveness of the single market cum Second Banking Directive in particular in integrating consumer credit markets. The relationship of national lending markets with the remaining eurozone lending markets, however, exhibits strong signs of structural changes that have come along with the introduction of the single currency. Regarding this period under monetary union, the results provide a first picture of an emerging uniform eurozone banking market. This tendency is more pronounced for the corporate lending market, while consumer lending markets are still more fragmented. The study identifies three possible driving forces of this integration process: cross-border borrowing and lending (arbitrage), a competitive national and international retail banking environment, and a smooth and uniform passthrough of interest rate changes onto lending rates. While the extent of cross-border retail banking is still very limited and interest rate pass-through is working most efficiently and uniformly in the more competitive corporate lending market, the authors conclude that the single currency has the potential to “complete” the single market in a very special sense. It is not so much cross-border arbitrage that has so far produced the “statistical signs” of an uniform retail banking market, but a smooth and uniform passthrough of interest rate changes induced by the single monetary policy. The lack of evidence of integration in consumer credit so far therefore also points to the relevance of competition policy for creating a uniform consumer credit market in the eurozone

Issues in the Credit Risk Modeling of Retail Markets

Retail loan markets create special challenges for credit risk assessment. Borrowers tend to be informationally opaque and borrow relatively infrequently. Retail loans are illiquid and do not trade in secondary markets. For these reasons, historical credit databases are usually not available for retail loans. Moreover, even when data are available, retail loan values are small in absolute terms and therefore application of sophisticated modeling is usually not cost effective on an individual loan-by-loan basis. These features of retail lending have led to the development of techniques that rely on portfolio aggregation in order to measure retail credit risk exposure. BIS proposals for the Basel New Capital Accord differentiate portfolios of mortgage loans from revolving credit loan portfolios from other retail loan portfolios in assessing the bank’s minimum capital requirement. We survey the most recent BIS proposals for the credit risk measurement of retail credits in capital regulations. We also describe the recent trend away from relationship lending toward transactional lending, even in the small business loan arena traditionally characterized by small banks extending relationship loans to small businesses. These trends create the opportunity to adopt more analytical, data-based approaches to credit risk measurement. We survey proprietary credit scoring models (such as Fair, Isaac and SMEloan), as well as options-theoretic structural models (such as KMV and Moody’s RiskCalc) and reduced form models (such as Credit Risk Plus)

Credit Default and Business Cycles: an empirical investigation of Brazilian retail loans

We use microdata from the Credit Information System (SCR) of the Central Bank of Brazil to study the relationship between credit default and business cycles. In particular, we study the first part of the argument underlying the discussion about procyclicality related to the Basel II Accord: that recessions might increase credit defaults and have adverse impacts on the losses in portfolios of lender institutions. We explore both time series and cross-sectional variation in the data. Our data on the individual level are composed of retail loan transactions in two modalities—Consumer Credit and Vehicle Financing—from 2003 to 2008. Our results support the idea of a negative relationship between business cycles and credit default, but less strong than suggested in previous studies that use corporate data. We also find low and dispersed default correlations, and smaller losses in Value at Risk (VaR) experiments than those found in the literature. These results may be possibly explained by the fact that, in the retail sector, loans are given to a large number of individuals, which may help to diversify risks.

Default Predictors in Retail Credit Scoring: Evidence from Czech Banking Data

Credit to the private sector has risen rapidly in European emerging markets but its risk evaluation has been largely neglected. Using retail-loan banking data from the Czech Republic we construct two credit risk models based on logistic regression and Classification and Regression Trees. Both methods are comparably efficient and detect similar financial and socio-economic variables as the key determinants of default behavior. We also construct a model without the most important financial variable (amount of resources) that performs very well. This way we confirm significance of socio-demographic variables and link our results with specific issues characteristic to new EU members.credit scoring, discrimination analysis, banking sector, pattern recognition, retail loans, CART, European Union

When for-profits and not-for-profits compete: theory and empirical evidence from retail banking

We model competition in local deposit markets between for-profit and not-for-profit financial institutions. For-profit retail banks may offer a superior bundle of financial services, but not-for-profit (occupational) credit unions enjoy sponsor subsidies that allow them to capture a share of the local market. The model predicts that greater participation in credit unions in a given county will be associated with higher levels of retail-bank concentration. We find empirical evidence of this association. The ability of credit unions to affect local banking market structure supports the presumption of current banking antitrust analysis that retail banking markets remain local. We identify local economic factors that modulate the nature of competition between banks and credit unions, including income per capita and population density.Banks and banking

Credit Card Payment Processing in Electronic Commerce: An Analysis of the Bucket Pricing Strategy

Credit cards have been the dominant payment method for the electronic commerce retail industry. However, online retailers, especially the small to medium ones, continue to be disadvantaged by the seemingly arbitrary bucket pricing strategy implemented by the credit card processing companies. We address the following research question: “Can the credit card processors continue to economically justify the use of bucket pricing structure, especially considering the increased competition within the industry and from competing payment alternatives?” We use an economic model as a basis of our analyses and discussions.Credit card payments; credit card processing; bucket pricing; tiered pricing; electronic commerce; online retailers.

Interchange fee rate, merchant discount rate and retail prices in a credit card network: A game-theoretic analysis

We consider two game-theoretic settings to determine the optimal values of an issuer's interchange fee rate, an acquirer's merchant discount rate, and a merchant's retail price in a credit card network. In the first setting, we investigate a two-stage game problem in which the issuer and the acquirer first negotiate the interchange fee rate, and the acquirer and the retailer then determine their merchant discount rate and retail price, respectively. In the second setting, motivated by the recent US bill “H.R. 2695,” we develop a three-player cooperative game in which the issuer, the acquirer, and the merchant form a grand coalition and bargain over the interchange fee rate and the merchant discount rate. Following the cooperative game, the retailer makes its retail pricing decision. We derive both the Shapley value- and the nucleolus-characterized, and globally-optimal unique rates for the grand coalition. Comparing the two game settings, we find that the participation of the merchant in the negotiation process can result in the reduction of both rates. Moreover, the stability of the grand coalition in the cooperative game setting may require that the merchant should delegate the credit card business only to the issuer and the acquirer with sufficiently low operation costs. We also show that the grand coalition is more likely to be stable and the U.S. bill “H.R. 2695” is thus more effective, if the degree of division of labor in the credit card network is higher as the merchant, acquirer, and issuer are more specialized in the retailing, acquiring, and issuing operations, respectively. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 201