Lending organization in Italian banks

This paper analyses how banks organize their lending activity in two surveys carried out in 2006 and in 2009. During this period, the use of rating and scoring methodologies became more widespread even among smaller banks. Larger banks used these techniques more frequently when pricing their loans, while the importance of ratings in granting a loan declined. In the wake of the crisis banks gave more importance to both hard and soft types of information and increased collateral requirements. The trend towards decentralizing decisionmaking seems to have halted and the average tenure of branch managers has shortened