Informationssignaler vid kreditbedömning av små och medelstora företag : En kvalitativ studie med inriktning på kunskapsintensiva företag

Companies require capital to be able to finance their business and for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), credits from banks is the most common form of external financing. In bank officers assesment of a company, information asymmetry occurs between bank officers and business leaders. In order to reduce this information asymmetry bank officers assess different information signals that the companies send out. In order to evaluate the financial information signals bank officers mainly look at the companies financial statements. This may be a problem for knowledge-intensive companies regarding the abilty to be granted credits, because their assets consist mainly of intellectual capital, which is not shown in the financial reports. The purpose of this study is therefore to create an understanding of the bank officers’ credit assessment process for knowledge-intensive SMEs in an information asymmetric context. This by describing the information signals that bank officers assess in the credit assessment process and the importance of these. The study also aims to identify the possible causes of the similarities and differences in the credit assessment of the knowledge-intensive SMEs compared to SMEs in general.The study is characterized by a qualitative method and has been conducted through interviews with twelve bank officers involved in the administration of business loans. One conclusion in this study is that all bank officers generally assess the same information signals but they put different emphasis and importance to them. The information signals that all bank officers assess are; business leader, industry, competition, nature of the investment and business, financial ratios, repayment capacity and collateral. In addition to these, four additional information signals are identified that only some of the bank officers assesses. These are; allocation between equity and borrowed capital, the environment and sustainability, ethics and which auditor the companies have. Another conclusion is that the information signals in terms of business leader, repayment capacity and the nature of the investment and business are more important than others in relation to each other, while the information signal collateral is of less importance. The study also shows that there are differences and difficulties in the credit assessment of the knowledge-intensive SMEs compared to SMEs in general. This because these companies have a greater dependence on individuals, have a small amount of material assets and because these companies often are more complex and sometimes operates in more niche markets.Validerat; 20160621 (global_studentproject_submitter