Working Paper
Are Banks Forward-Looking in Their Loan Loss Provisioning? Evidence from the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS)
This paper makes a fundamental contribution by studying loan-loss provisioning over the credit cycle as three distinct phases. Looking at the three distinct phases of the financial crisis—the precrisis period, crisis period, and postcrisis period—is important as loan-loss provisioning is driven by different factors in each, in part due to extensive shifts in (or in the application of) regulatory rule. We show evidence of forward-looking loan-loss provisioning by utilizing Senior Loan Officer Opinion Surveys (SLOOS), which provide useful controls for credit cycle information. Though the SLOOS data set is a restricted sample and generalizability to a broader sample could potentially be a stretch, we control for credit cycle factors as part of an identification strategy to sort out changes in the credit market equilibrium. We contribute to the growing literature on forward-looking loan-loss provisioning and early-in-the-cycle loss recognition by incorporating a broader range of available credit information.
Suggested Citation
Balasubramanyan, Lakshmi, Saeed Zaman, and James B. Thomson. 2013. “Are Banks Forward-Looking in Their Loan Loss Provisioning? Evidence from the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) ” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper No. 13-13. https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-201313
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