dc.description.abstract | Prior to the de-regulation of establishing new banks in 1990, entire financial environment of the Taiwanese banking industry is dominated by the selling side with low competition and high profit, and the lending target was primarily the public institutions or large-scale private enterprises; the small and medium enterprises, in practice, were very difficult to acquire funds through banking channel. Nevertheless, not until the financial liberalization had new banks been continuously established, the intense competition among banks (or we may say, more than 50 banks in its prime period) obliged the financing environment to be shifted into buyer market; since then, the circumstance has been not so difficult for the small and medium enterprises to receive the funding from banks.
The small and medium enterprises have always rendered outstanding contributions to the economic development of Taiwan, which is the meritorious role acting as the industrial mainframe to create our economic miracles and employing the highest populace in all enterprises here in Taiwan. For it has become so important, how to counsel small and medium enterprises to obtain credited loan, create sound financing physique, and help them in operating development is turning into an important administration target for our government. The main resource for small and medium enterprises to secure operating funds is coming from banking loan; not but that there are many banks now, the strategy of banking loan is still maintained in a conservative way, particularly, onto the small-micro-and medium-sized enterprise with high credit risk. Thus, several enterprises are turning to leasing companies, private financing, or personal credit, so as to obtain the fund which is invisibly increasing the costs and cause detrimental to their operating developments.
The study is first to analyze the loan market structure of domestic banks to small and medium enterprises through the analysis of Structure, Conduct, and Performance (SCP). We find that the market structure of small and medium enterprises loan is between oligopoly and monopolistic competition. The governmental banks (or State-Own Banks) occupy more than 60% of the market share. After 2009, the loan for small and medium enterprises was substantially increased while the loaning process (local banks to small and medium enterprises) was still based upon the safety and profitability. In the operational performance, SME’ overdue loans rate is higher than that of the total loan, SME loan contribute near 10% of the profit.
In a Case Study on E. Sun Bank we analyze E-Sun bank’ SME lending strategy and reason of its significant performance and find that its lending target is larger scale customer segment and its lending pricing has included risk cost. The bank has won the Credit-guaranty Partner Award (headquarter prize) for 10 consecutive year in terms of SME.
The research findings show that the bank making loans to SMEs are based on the consideration of risk, and prefers large-scale SME with better physique, the result of which makes the small enterprises, or micro-enterprises (the individual proprietorship/accounted for 55.04 percent of small enterprises) difficult to obtain financing from banks. In addition, in the process of conducting loan or ranking credit, the banks’ strategies and interest pricing may be directly affected by the distortion arising from statements submitted by SME whose original intention is due to tax saving. As to the “Small and Medium Business Credit Guarantee Fund of Taiwan” established by our government to counsel SMEs obtaining banking loan, for the inconsistency and huge variation occurs before and after the policy, it is not only affecting banks’ participating willingness, but also leading to difficulties for SME to secure the loan. In addition to the financial and non-financial information, when granting a loan banks consider the interaction with bank and contribution to bank. Such important factors are often neglected by SME who fail to obtain a better credit terms they deserve. | en_US |