Bank supervision and non-performing loan cleansing

This paper studies whether supervisory actions, namely provisioning guidelines on non-performing loans (NPLs), affect banks’ NPL cleansing and lending behaviour, as well as the real economy. Using the supervisory intervention announced by the European Central Bank in the first quarter of 2018 as a quasi-natural experiment, we show that banks disposed of old NPLs at a higher rate after the policy shift. Banks that were more heavily exposed to the policy tightened their lending standards, especially for risky firms. Furthermore, banks with stronger fundamentals were more keen on disposing NPLs and less restrained on lending. We also find that firms borrowing from banks affected by the supervisory actions experienced a decline in the growth rates of their total assets, investment, employment and sales. Our results highlight the importance of supervisory actions on NPL management, and potential beneficial effects on credit allocation.