What does the bank lending survey tell us about credit conditions for euro area firms

This article examines bank lending conditions for euro area non-financial corporations (NFCs), making use of the wealth of soft information available in the euro area bank lending survey (BLS) since its inception in 2003. One relevant question in this context is whether the tightening of the bank loan supply during the financial and sovereign debt crises has been offset by the easing of bank lending conditions for NFC loans since 2014. The article illustrates that the easing over this period has come mainly through a substantial loosening of the actual terms and conditions applied by banks to new loans to firms of average credit quality, while the credit standards that banks have established for their loan approval decisions have eased by less. The article also draws on the responses of individual banks to examine the differences in bank lending conditions for NFC loans across bank business models. This analysis reveals that the change in credit conditions of banks with business models more reliant on stable funding sources, such as deposits, is more muted. In short, it looks at additional aspects that enhance the regular assessment of bank lending conditions faced by firms based on the euro area BLS. JEL Classification: E4, E44, E5, E52, G21