Recent developments in lending to non-financial corporations: supply and demand factors

Abstract

Since summer 2020, resident banks’ lending to non-financial corporations has been sluggish. In the wake of the impact of the health crisis, this has been against a backdrop of weak demand, a relatively steady supply of bank lending and an increase in financing obtained through issuance of debt securities. An analysis drawing on the granular information both of firms and banks confirms that this loss of momentum in bank lending is explained essentially by demand factors. In particular, there are signs that some firms have been using part of the liquidity buffers they built up in 2020, and that large corporations have replaced part of their bank lending with issuance of debt securities. The analysis also suggests that supply factors linked to the amount of capital available to banks are not an important factor in explaining the weakness of lending to non-financial corporations during the period considered.