L’information est au cœur du processus d’intermédiation financière. Pourtant, la manière dont les décisionnaires de la banque utilisent et interprètent l’information dans le processus d’octroi de crédit demeure une boîte noire. A partir d’une analyse statistique textuelle...

In this paper, to begin with, we define soft information as qualitative, subjective information produced by banks through the establishment of long-term lending relationships. We then highlight the importance of soft information for cooperative and social banks in the screening, pricing and...

Microfinance is generally associated with high repayment rates. However, it is not clear whether the success of microfinance results only from the use of group lending or is also due to other mechanisms such as peer sanctioning or dynamic incentives induced by long-term relationships that are...

This paper analyzes whether soft information improves predictive accuracy of a bank’s internal rating by better forecasting future credit defaults. We use a unique hand-collected database of 389 small loans granted by a French social bank (credit cooperative) dealing with (very) small...