Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans

Using a data set that records banks’ ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find that banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to borrow...

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Main Authors: Minnis, Michael, Sutherland, Andrew Gordon
Other Authors: Sloan School of Management
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Wiley Blackwell 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109261
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2517-1685
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author Minnis, Michael
Sutherland, Andrew Gordon
author2 Sloan School of Management
author_facet Sloan School of Management
Minnis, Michael
Sutherland, Andrew Gordon
author_sort Minnis, Michael
collection MIT
description Using a data set that records banks’ ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find that banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to borrower credit risk, relationship length, collateral, and the provision of business tax returns, but in complex ways. The relation between borrower risk and financial statement requests has an inverted U-shape; and tax returns can be both substitutes and complements to financial statements, conditional on borrower characteristics and the degree of bank–borrower information asymmetry. Frequent financial reporting is used to monitor collateral, but only for non–real estate loans and only when the collateral is easily accessible to lenders. Collectively, our results provide novel evidence of a fundamental information demand for financial reporting in monitoring small commercial borrowers and a specific channel through which banks fulfill their role as delegated monitors.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1092612022-09-30T14:26:11Z Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans Minnis, Michael Sutherland, Andrew Gordon Sloan School of Management Sutherland, Andrew Gordon Using a data set that records banks’ ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find that banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to borrower credit risk, relationship length, collateral, and the provision of business tax returns, but in complex ways. The relation between borrower risk and financial statement requests has an inverted U-shape; and tax returns can be both substitutes and complements to financial statements, conditional on borrower characteristics and the degree of bank–borrower information asymmetry. Frequent financial reporting is used to monitor collateral, but only for non–real estate loans and only when the collateral is easily accessible to lenders. Collectively, our results provide novel evidence of a fundamental information demand for financial reporting in monitoring small commercial borrowers and a specific channel through which banks fulfill their role as delegated monitors. 2017-05-22T18:04:48Z 2017-05-22T18:04:48Z 2016-07 2016-01 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0021-8456 1475-679X http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109261 Minnis, Michael and Sutherland, Andrew. “Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans.” Journal of Accounting Research 55, no. 1 (August 2016): 197–233 © 2016 University of Chicago on behalf of the Accounting Research Center https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2517-1685 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-679x.12127 Journal of Accounting Research Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Wiley Blackwell SSRN
spellingShingle Minnis, Michael
Sutherland, Andrew Gordon
Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans
title Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans
title_full Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans
title_fullStr Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans
title_full_unstemmed Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans
title_short Financial Statements as Monitoring Mechanisms: Evidence from Small Commercial Loans
title_sort financial statements as monitoring mechanisms evidence from small commercial loans
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109261
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2517-1685
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