Banks’ consumer lending reaction to fintech and bigtech credit emergence in the context of soft versus hard credit information processing

We analyze competition in the consumer lending segment between banks and financial technology (or “fintech”) companies (or “fintechs”) as well as giant technology (or “bigtech”) companies (or “bigtechs”) providing alternative credit. We use a database combining bank-level characteristics and country-level proxies for 72 countries during 2013–2018. We find that in developed markets, the relations between fintech/bigtech credit providers and banks are similar and competitive in nature. However, banks’ consumer lending grows simultaneously with fintech credit market development in emerging economies but decreases in the aftermath of bigtech credit emergence. Fintech credit seems to penetrate market segments not serviced by banks; thus, it plays a complementary role, but only in emerging economies. Bigtechs compete even more with banks and push some banking offers out of the market, both in emerging and developed economies. Furthermore, we show that domestic and privately owned banks are more negatively affected by competition from technology-based lending, particularly bigtech, compared to foreign banks. Thus, bigtech lending may be treated as a serious competition for banks’ relationship lending, based on soft credit information processing, provisioned traditionally by local banks.