Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to answer the increasing calls to analyse how lending relationship between banks and their small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) work. More precisely, the main aim is to investigate the lending approach(es) and criteria used by banks to assess loan applications from their relationship-managed (RM) SMEs’ clients. Other objectives include investigating the level of congruence in terms of lending practices and processes among the sample banks in New Zealand (NZ) and to discern how the assessment of the SME owner/manager is done within the relationship-banking framework.

Design/methodology/approach

The research objectives concern investigating processes and not variances. Thus, a qualitative research approach was used. Extensive data was collected via interviews across representative banks in NZ and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.

Findings

The findings include a detailed analysis of how relationship banking actually works; how in NZ, the main bank brands use three criteria of lending (financials, security and character) as a framework of assessing loan applications from RM-clients – which is different from the character, capital, capacity, conditions, and collateral (5Cs) that are widely used and discussed as the framework of lending; and an elucidation as to why and how character assessment is different from the other criteria of lending.

Originality/value

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the mechanisms and processes that banks use to deal with their RM-SMEs, show the existence of a different framework of lending other than the 5Cs and attempt an explanation as to why character evaluation is different from that of the other criteria of lending.

中文翻译：

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中小企业与银行之间的对决分析：以新西兰主要银行及其受关系管理的中小企业为例

目的

本文的目的是回答人们越来越多的需求，以分析银行与其中小企业之间的借贷关系如何工作。更确切地说，主要目的是研究银行用来评估其关系管理（RM）中小企业客户的贷款申请的一种或多种贷款方法和标准。其他目标包括调查新西兰样本银行在贷款实践和程序方面的一致性水平，并了解如何在关系银行框架内对中小企业所有者/经理进行评估。

设计/方法/方法

研究目标与调查过程有关，与差异无关。因此，使用了定性研究方法。通过对新西兰代表银行的访谈收集了广泛的数据，并使用了主题分析来分析数据。

发现

调查结果包括对关系银行实际运作方式的详细分析；在新西兰，主要银行品牌如何使用三个贷款标准（财务，担保和特征）作为评估RM客户的贷款申请的框架-与特征，资本，能力，条件和抵押品（5C）不同作为贷款的框架被广泛使用和讨论；阐明了为什么品格评估与其他评估标准不同。

创意/价值

据作者所知，这是第一个研究银行用来处理其RM-SME的机制和过程，表明除5C之外还存在其他贷款框架并试图解释其原因的第一项研究。性格评价与其他贷款标准不同。