Consumer credit has become increasingly popular in Russia over the past few years. With the rapid growth of lending to individuals and companies, the need for accumulation of credit histories and information, collection services of bad debts, and credit insurance and financing also become of increased importance. It was found in this thesis that the larger credit limit given to corporate clients, the greater will the loss be if there is a default and the money cannot be collected. Giving credit to a small number of customers also increases the concentration of the risk. The opportunity to diversify in consumer credit is, however, limited because of the geo-graphic concentration of the customers, and the macro economic risk cannot be elimi-nated. Credit periods in consumer credit are in general longer, leading to higher uncertainty of payment and hence higher exposure to risk. Personal relationships are not established with customers in consumer credit, which are argued to act as “insurances” in corporate credit. Consumer credit is more common among international companies, leading to better offers and more flexibility in the service. Insurers of corporate credit have a restrictive policy with higher premiums and more administrative work, which is less attractive for companies to take on. Creditors also have to share the risk with insurance companies, often having to pay more than 15 percent of a default. With respect to what was mentioned above, it was concluded in this thesis that the risk of giving credit to individuals does not necessary have to be higher than that of corporate cli-ents, but that the terms of the contract is more favourable for the creditor in consumer credit.

Today all private corporations are obligated by statutory audit. The government of Sweden appointed an investigation to conclude if the audit should be statutory or not. The investigator presented on the third of April 2008 a report (SOU 2008:32) that suggests abolishment of the statutory audit for approximately 97 % of all private corporations in Sweden. This will result in certain effects on the banks credit rating because of the fact that the banks trust the audited accounts to have been audited by an independent audit. The most important in the banks credit rating are: personal judgement, business concept, business plan and repayment ability. The banks also use the private corporations audited accounts in its credit rating. We conducted a case study by interviewing four bank officials in different banks in Skövde and Tibro. The purpose of the study was to investigate the banks credit rating and the audits importance in the credit rating. The conclusion deducted from our case study it that the confidence between the bank and the company is very high valued and that the audit is a sign of quality.

Banking is topic, practice, business or profession almost as old as the very existence of man, but literarily it can be rooted deep back the days of the Renaissance (by the Florentine Bankers). It has sprouted from the very primitive Stone-age banking, through the Victorian-age to the technology-driven Google-age banking, encompassing automatic teller machines (ATMs), credit and debit cards, correspondent and internet banking. Credit risk has always been a vicinity of concern not only to bankers but to all in the business world because the risks of a trading partner not fulfilling his obligations in full on due date can seriously jeopardize the affaires of the other partner. The axle of this study is to have a clearer picture of how banks manage their credit risk. In this light, the study in its first section gives a background to the study and the second part is a detailed literature review on banking and credit risk management tools and assessment models. The third part of this study is on hypothesis testing and use is made of a simple regression model. This leads us to conclude in the last section that banks with good credit risk management policies have a lower loan default rate and relatively higher interest income.

The new accounting standards IFRS and IAS was implemented in January 2005, the purpose was to harmonize accounting standards world wide. As a result of these new rules the real estate companies are allowed to appraise real estates assets at market value. It has long been debated whether this appraisal fulfils the requirements for relevance, reliability and comparability. The paper attends to how banks control the information given by the real estate companies in the process of credit granting. As an introduction we describe the purpose of accounting and the problematic´s about appraisals with market values. Further on there is a discussion on which factors are taken into consideration when banks grant credits. The study is built on interviews at three different commercial banks. At each bank one bank advisor was interviewed, the respondent were given specific questions and at the same time were free to speak openly about the subject. In conclusion all banks focus on the real estates companies ability to repay the bank credits with revenues from the investment. With the focus on reimbursement banks will minimize the risk of credit losses and thereby decrease the risk of history repeating itself with new bank crisis. Besides the ability to repay credits banks also consider the fact’s, who is leading the company and how this owner has conduct prior businesses. In comparison whit theory and empirics all banks, in there credit granting process, fulfil the requirements for relevance, reliability and comparability. In summary the banks do not consider real estates valued at market prices as a problem in there assessments.

Purpose: To investigate whether or not the credit granters believe the quality in audits will deteriorate after the abolishment of statutory audit and, if that is the case, how the abolishment will strike the purpose and goal of accounting. Approach: To answer our purpose we carried out a literature study to later implement interviews with four granters of credits specialised in business accounts. Findings: The process of credit granting will not change after the abolishment of statutory audit for companies still using audit reports. Though, for other companies the process will change dramatically since the lean time of the process will increase. Higher demands will be put on these companies since the reliability in the economic information will decrease when it is no longer being reviewed in the same sense. Though, the credit granters believe that some form of substitute for audit will be demanded in order for the companies to be granted credits from the bank.

In a firm level matched sample of 499 firms we examine the information flow between stocks and the credit default swap (CDSs) over a period of January 2004 to December 2008. Our study confirms the general findings of previous studies that the information generally flows from equity market to CDS market. However, for a much smaller number of firms we also find that information also flows from the CDS to its stock. A major advantage of our sample period is that it allows us to examine the information flow before and during the crisis. This paper makes two contributions. We document that the firms for which the information flows from the CDS to its stock increases by almost tenfold during the crisis. The current crisis is often referred as a credit crisis, so this finding is consistent with what is expected of CDSs. The major contribution of this paper is that it identifies the firm specific factors that influence the information flow across the two markets. We show that characteristics such as asset size, profitability, and industry, amongst others, play an important role in determining information flow.

Credit Default Swaps have become a large part of financial markets and recently the center of debate between academics and regulators alike. Transferring the techniques to measure information flow between the CDS market and stock markets presented by Acharya and Johnson (2007), this paper looks at the relationship between a countries sovereign CDS spread level and its predominate stock exchange. Under the back drop of the Greek Credit Crisis in Spring of 2010 I measure contagion effects in the Euro Zone comparing the level of Granger causality significance between the stock and CDS market. I find that the greatest information flow from the CDS market to the stock market is during credit shocks or times of high credit distress. My results also point to the significance of the contagion effect in the CDS market but not in the stock market.

This paper uses U.S. macroeconomic data drawn from 2001 to 2010 in order to test for the operation of a credit channel of monetary transmission. Using a combination of a VAR and ADL time series frameworks, evidence is found for the impairment of the credit channel during the crisis period relative to the period which preceded it. Evidence is also found against the presence of a "credit crunch" during the crisis, and supporting evidence is found for the existence of a "credit trap." This analysis indicates a significant role for credit market imperfections in the transmission of monetary policy, and holds policy implications for the potential impact of future monetary expansions conducted in the setting of a financial crisis.

This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 and 2 The first chapter presents the introduction and the summary and the second chapter provides details on the survey and the data collection. Chapter 3 The demand and supply of credit in the rural finance markets are investigated in this paper using data on 989 households, in Orissa, India. The aim is to study the effects of household, farm productive characteristics and the policy variables on the demand and supply of credit. A type 3 Tobit model is estimated which corrects for sample selection and endogeniety bias. In addition, a generalised Double Hurdle model is estimated where the household's access to credit is treated distinctly from decisions about the interest rate charged. The results from the type 3 tobit model suggest that the size of the operational holdings, net-wealth, the dependency ratio, educational level of the household and the wages and output prices are important determinants of the demand and supply of credit. The Double Hurdle model suggests the important result that the size of land owned plays a crucial role in whether the household obtains a loan or not. Chapter 4 Based on the 'Rural Credit Market Survey of the Puri district in India', this paper investigates evidence on segmentation in the rural credit markets of Puri district. It further investigates the presence of any systematic association between the type of collateral offered by the household and the rate of interest at which it borrows. The data shows differences in the loan characteristics between the households borrowing from the formal and the informal sector. The empirical results confirm the presence of segmentation in the Puri credit market. For the households borrowing from the informal sector and the moneylenders, evidence also shows that the marketability of the collateral is inversely related to the interest rate. However, no such clear relationship is found for households borrowing from the formal sector. Chapter 5 In the theoretical and the empirical literature on rural credit markets it is widely assumed that the households are credit rationed in the formal sector, which offers subsidised credit. This view rests on the assumptions that all households have a positive demand for formal credit and that it is the cheaper source of credit. Three different models of formal credit rationing are estimated in this paper. The first model is a conventional credit-rationing model. The second model assumes that the probability to borrow from the formal sector is jointly determined by the demand for credit and the decision of the bank on access. Finally, the third model relaxes both these assumptions and the household chooses between borrowing from the formal or the informal sector. The results confirm that the access to the formal sector in the Puri rural credit markets is limited and that there exists a high demand for credit. This suggests a high degree of effective credit rationing by the formal sector in Puri.

Bakgrund och problemdiskussion: Bankkrisen under 1990-talet och den globala krisen mellan 2007 -2009 har kommit som en kalldusch för de svenska storbankerna, Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB och Swedbank, vilket har lett till betydande kreditförluster. Kreditförluster är den vanligaste orsaken till bankernas ekonomiska problem vid en finansiell kris då återbetalningsförmågan hos kredittagare försämras, samtidigt som det talar för att finansiella kriser är ett återkommande fenomen idag. Syfte: Syftet med detta examensarbete är att se vilka åtgärder i kreditprocessen som gjorts efter finanskriserna i de fyra svenska storbankerna samt även se hur tidigare gjorda åtgärder stod sig under den senaste krisen. Vår ambition med uppsatsen är att de resultat vi får fram ska kunna användas av bankerna i kreditprocessen så att de påverkas mindre vid framtida eventuella kriser. Metod: Uppsatsen grundar sig på en kvalitativ metod med respondenter med gedigen erfarenhet och ansvarspositioner inom storbankernas kreditprocesser och praktisk kunnighet gällande storbankernas påverkan av finansiella kriser. Slutsats: De svenska storbankernas kreditprocesser stod sig bra under den senaste globala krisen i jämförelse med bankkrisen under 1990-talet, orsaken till det är de åtgärder som gjordes i kreditprocessen efter bankkrisen inom banken. Kreditprocessen har under de senaste 20 åren gått från en delvis oprövad och snabb kreditprocess till att idag vara en mer sofistikerad och tungarbetad kreditprocess som ställer högre och strängare krav på kredittagarna. För att få kreditprocessen helt vaccinerad mot finanskriser anser vi att det behövs mer mod och integritet hos kredithandläggare för att på bästa sätt kunna förmedla den rådande situationen på ett korrekt och snabbt sätt. / Background and problem discussion: The banking crisis during the 1990s and the global financial crisis between 2007-2009 came as a cold shower for the four biggest Swedish banks, Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank and led to significant credit losses. Credit losses are the most common financial problems of banks during financial crises, because the repayment ability of borrowers can deteriorate. In addition, financial crises seem to be a recurring phenomenon today. Aim: The objective of this paper is to see what kind of changes that have been made after financial crisis, and also see how the previous changes during the recent banking crisis stood during the recent global crisis. Our ambition with the paper is that the results we obtain can be used by the Swedish banks credit process so that they are less vulnerable in the future. Method: The paper is based on a qualitative approach with respondents with extensive experience and influence in the credit process. The respondents in the four biggest banks have practical experience of the banks impact after the financial crises. Conclusion: The biggest Swedish banks credit process did well during the last financial crisis in comparison with the banking crisis in the 1990s. One of the reasons are the changes made after the previous crisis related to credit processes.. The credit process has, during the past 20 years, gone from a partially untested and fast-credit process towards a more sophisticated and heavy credit process which puts more responsibility on the borrowers. In order to fully protect banks against future financial crises, we believe more courage and integrity among credit managers is necessary. Upcoming threats needs to be reported in a proper and fast way.