Report on a Fact-Finding Survey of the Credit-Decision System and Loan Pricing in Small Business Financing in Japan

In this paper, we report the findings from an interview survey on the system and process of lending decisions and loan pricing, as well as the information that is used in such processes. The survey targeted 19 regional financial institutions, including regional banks and cooperative institutions in Japan. We found that soft information is used in lending decisions but is rarely used directly in loan pricing, and found that each branch exercises greater discretion in loan pricing. Soft information affects loan pricing indirectly through each bank's internal credit rating process. Loan officers at a bank usually revise the financial statements submitted by client firms using soft information in order to more accurately reflect the actual conditions.

An Estimation of the Inside Bank Premium

This paper is an empirical examination of the existence of the inside bank premium arising from relationship banking, which is predicted in the extant theoretical models. These models predict that the contracted interest rate of a loan extended by an inside bank when there exist asymmetries between the inside bank and outside banks, such as the information advantage of the inside bank or the implicit insurance and other borrower-specific services exclusively provided by the inside bank, is higher than that without such asymmetries. Our statistical estimations are based on the dataset collected through the survey for small and medium-sized firms in Japan, which were designed to contain the questions about a firm's loan application process, and the agreed-upon loan terms that are crucial to our tests. Our estimations show that such an inside bank premium is 30-50 basis points on average for short-term loans. This is economically significant for the median short-term interest rate of 1.9 %. The subsample regressions show that this premium is more likely to come from the implicit insurance and that this premium is more significant for smaller inside banks in more competitive loan markets.

The Role of Government-Affiliated Financial Institutions in the Startup Period (Japanese)

This study seeks to clarify the role of government-affiliated financial institutions in business startups through quantitative analysis based on microdata from a questionnaire targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The study aims to examine two points: the complementary relationship between government-affiliated and private sector financial institutions and the effectiveness of direct lending by government-affiliated institutions. The probit model is used to analyze the first point. As a result, it has been confirmed that government-affiliated financial institutions primarily lend to companies that cannot borrow from private sector financial institutions. Specifically, the study verifies that, compared to private sector financial institutions, a high proportion of government-affiliated financial institutions' lending tends to be to entrepreneurs who have fewer assets and less collateral as well as little business experience. The complementary relationship with private sector financial institutions is also verified in terms of regional attributes and attributes relating to the macroeconomic environment, thus with respect to startups government-affiliated financial institutions cannot be seen as competing with their private sector counterparts. The second point is analyzed using OLS and IV with the employment growth rate as the dependent variable. As a result, it has been verified that the crossover points are significantly positive for operating variables taking account of the endogeny of the public sector borrowing dummy and the public sector borrowing dummy x number of years since establishment (logarithm). This suggests the possibility that companies borrowing solely from government-affiliated financial institutions grow gradually in accordance with the number of years since their establishment.

The Current Status of SME Financing under the Financial Crisis: A summary of the Survey on the Status of Transactions between Businesses and Financial Institutions (Feb. 2008) and the Survey on the Status of Transactions between Businesses and Financial Institutions following the Financial Crisis (Feb. 2009). (Japanese)

This paper summarizes the results of two questionnaires presented to small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) by RIETI in February 2008 and February 2009. Given the limited data on SMEs, the purpose of the questionnaires is to understand the current status of financing for SMEs facing this serious economic recession, triggered by the financial crisis. The Survey on the Status of Transactions between Businesses and Financial Institutions conducted in February 2008, was sent to 17,018 companies nationwide, with SMEs being the main target, and of those recipients 6,124 companies or 36.0% responded. This survey, which was designed to explain the structural characteristics of SME financing, illustrated terms and conditions such as accounts payable and bills payable for inter-firm credit, differences in the roles of major lending financial institutions including main banks, and the impact of changes in the credit guarantee system in recent years. Regarding the Survey on the Status of Transactions between Businesses and Financial Institutions following the Financial Crisis conducted in February 2009, RIETI targeted 5,979 of the companies who responded to the 2008 survey and of those companies 4,103 or 68.6% responded. The survey was conducted to understand how the relationships between companies and financial institutions and customers and suppliers changed, and what measures SMEs took to address these changes, in light of the fact that the cash management of SMEs has been extremely difficult since last autumn, when the global credit crunch set in. Although the surveys were not identical, some of the same questions were asked in both surveys. The answers to these questions were then compared to see how conditions had changed and to understand which areas of SME financing had become more difficult.

中小企業金融の環境変化のもとでの政策金融の役割と課題 : 「金融機関に対する中小企業の意識調査」の結果をもとに

本稿は，全国の中小企業15000社を対象にして， 2013年2月から3月にかけて実施したアンケート調査「金融機関に対する中小企業の意識調査」の結果を紹介したものである。約4400社からの回答に基づき，中小企業金融の現状，それに対する企業の意識，中小企業を支援する政策金融(とくに日本政策金融公庫)の果たしてきた役割と今後の課題などが明らかになった。主な点は次のようにまとめられる。(1)日本政策金融公庫の取引先は，非取引先に比べて経営状態が悪く，グローバル金融危機によって深刻な影響を受けており，民間金融機関の対応も厳しい。また，企業の業績が悪くなると，民間金融機関は政府系金融機関の利用を勧める傾向がある。公庫はこうした企業にとってセーフテイネットとして機能している。(2)公庫融資を利用しているほとんどの企業は， 同時に民間金融機関の融資も利用しているが，その場合，民間金融機関からは4～5年程度の中期融資を，公庫からはそれよりも長期資金を調達するといった形で，両者の強みを利用している。公庫の融資が新製品の発売などの前向きの効果をもたらす度合いが高いのは，メインバンクとの関係が完全ではないが，ある程度強固な企業群である。また，「雇用を維持する」点ではメインバンクとの関係が弱い企業で公庫借入の効果が顕著である。(3)公庫の利用理由として「低金利」や「長期安定的資金」といった点をあげる企業が多いが，同時に，公庫の融資姿勢-固定金利型の長期資金を景気変動にぶれずに融資している姿勢-への信頼感が公庫の評価を高めている。そのため，メインバンクから勧められるのではなく， 企業の独自の判断に基づいて公庫を利用している例が多い。一方で，「メインバンクから融資を勧められたから」公庫を利用した先は，「2期連続黒字」企業に比べて「2期連続赤字」企業で倍以上の回答率となっている。民間金融機関が厳しい対応をとるので，公庫との取引を開始・拡大している企業も多い。(4)リーマン・ショック後のメインバンク及び政府系金融機関の対応への満足度を尋ねたところ，政府系金融機関に対する満足度はメインバンクに比べて高かった。日本政策金融公庫からの借入の効果として，借入企業の内の4割強の企業が「設備投資を行い生産性が向上した」や「従業員を維持又は新たに雇用することができた」と回答しており，メインバンクからの借入の評価に比べると，積極的な効果があったとの回答が多かった。(5)リーマン・ショック後の危機時のメインバンクや政府系金融機関の担当者と企業との接触頻度をみると，民間金融機関が経営状態の良い企業への訪問頻度を高めがちであるのに対して，政府系金融機関は経営状態の悪い企業への訪問頻度を高める傾向がみられた。平時および危機時のいずれにおいても対応できるように，民間金融機関と政府系金融機関の協力関係を一層高度化し，中小企業の支援態勢を今後とも強化していくことが望まれる。(6)店舗が少なく，顧客との日常的な接触頻度が少なくなりがちな政府系金融機関は，独自のアプローチによって企業とのリレーションを構築しなければならない。信用保証制度などの政策に関連したアドバイスに加えて，新しい資金調達方法や資金調達・財務に関するアドバイスといった点では， 民間金融機関よりも政府系金融機関の方が成果を出しているが，中小企業の経営に直結する「新しい販売先」や「新しい仕入れ先」といった面では十分ではない。また，企業の側に制度への理解不足があって，幅広い利用を阻害している可能性があり，広報体制の整備も重要な課題として残っている。(7)将来，リーマン・ショックのような危機が発生し，メインバンクから十分に資金が調達できない場合には，6割弱の企業が「政府系金融機関等から借入」で対応すると回答している。セーフテイネットとしての政府系金融機関の役割は，今後とも引き続き期待されている