metadata: authors: 0: author: Arraiz,Irani
1: author: Bruhn,Miriam
2: author: Ruiz Ortega,Claudia
3: author: Stucchi,Rodolfo Mario
count: Peru
docna: 0: docna: Are psychometric tools a viable screening
            method for small and medium-size enterprise lending ?
            evidence from Peru
docty: Policy Research Working Paper
subtopic: Financial Structures,Legal Institutions of the Market Economy,Financial Crisis Management & Restructuring,Rural Microfinance and SMEs,Microfinance
teratopic: Rural Development,Public Sector Development,Finance and Financial Sector Development
abstracts: cdata!: This study collaborated with the
            Entrepreneurial Finance Lab and a large bank in Peru to use
            psychometrics for small and medium-size enterprise lending.
            Applicants used a psychometric tool and those who achieved a
            score higher than a threshold were offered a loan. Using a
            regression discontinuity design and credit bureau data, the
            study finds that the tool increased small and medium-size
            enterprise loan use by up to 59 percentage points for
            applicants without a credit history, without leading to
            worse repayment behavior. This increase in borrowing
            resulted primarily from financial institutions other than
            the partner bank. For applicants with a credit history, the
            tool did not increase small and medium-size enterprise loan use.
geo_reg_key: 119228,517191
repnme: repnme: Are psychometric tools a viable screening
            method for small and medium-size enterprise lending ?
            evidence from Peru
display_title: Are psychometric tools a viable
            screening method for small and medium-size enterprise
            lending evidence from Peru
listing_relative_url: /research/2017/12/29269358/psychometric-tools-viable-screening-method-small-medium-size-enterprise-lending-evidence-peru
topicv3: Microfinance m1327227 367,Credit Reporting m1327250 357,Financial Institutions m1505015 3797,Credit Scoring m1505077 3882,Credit Risk m1505083 3885
publishtoextweb_dt: 2017-12-14T00:00:00Z
historic_topic: Rural Development,Public Sector Development,Finance and Financial Sector Development
no_of_pages: 36
author_keys: 0: author_key: 955274
1: author_key: 1174517
2: author_key: 933987
model_extractions: WPS8276 Policy Research Working Paper 8276 Are Psychometric Tools a Viable Screening Method for Small and Medium-Size Enterprise Lending?

Evidence from Peru _Irani Arráiz Miriam Bruhn Claudia Ruiz Ortega Rodolfo Stucchi_ Development Research Group Finance and Private Sector Development Team December 2017
Policy Research Working Paper 8276

# **Abstract**

This study collaborated with the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab and a large bank in Peru to use psychometrics for small and medium-size enterprise lending. Applicants used a psychometric tool and those who achieved a score higher than a threshold were offered a loan. Using a regression discontinuity design and credit bureau data, the study finds that the tool increased small and medium-size enterprise loan use by up to 59 percentage points for applicants without a credit history, without leading to worse repayment behavior. This increase in borrowing resulted primarily from financial institutions other than the partner bank. For applicants with a credit history, the tool did not increase small and medium-size enterprise loan use.

This paper is a product of the Finance and Private Sector Development Team, Development Research Group. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The authors may be contacted at mbruhn@worldbank.org and cruizortega@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team
# **Are Psychometric Tools a Viable Screening Method for Small and Medium-Size Enterprise Lending? Evidence from Peru**<sup>**1**</sup>

Irani Arráiz,<sup>2</sup> Miriam Bruhn,<sup>3</sup> Claudia Ruiz Ortega,<sup>4</sup> Rodolfo Stucchi<sup>5</sup>

## **JEL Classification:** D82, G21, G32

**Keywords:** Asymmetric information, psychometrics, credit risk, access to credit.

> 1 We thank the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab and our partner bank for sharing their data and information, as well as Pierre Freundt from Equifax Peru for patiently answering our questions. We are also grateful to Asim Khwaja and Bailey Klinger for their valuable comments. Alejandra Arrieta provided excellent research assistance. Financial support for this project was provided by the Strategic Research Program. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, Inter-American Investment Corporation, or the World Bank, their Boards of Directors, or the countries they represent.

> 2 Inter-American Development Bank; e-mail: iarraiz@iadb.org

> 3 World Bank; e-mail: mbruhn@worldbank.org

> 4 World Bank; e-mail: cruizortega@worldbank.org

> 5 IDB Invest; e-mail: rstucchi@iadb.org
# **1. Introduction**

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) tend to face greater financial constraints than large firms, in part because they are subject to information asymmetries that are less salient for large firms. SMEs often lack audited financial statements and other information about their operations, and as a result, financial institutions have difficulties assessing the risk of lending to them (de la Torre, Martínez <mark>Pería,</mark> an <mark>d Schmukler</mark> 2009).

Several studies have documented that information sharing, credit bureaus, and credit scoring can increase credit to SMEs (Berger, Frame, and Miller, 2005; Brown, Jappelli, and Pagano, 2009; Love and Mylenko, 2003; Martinez Pería and Singh, 2014). However, not all countries have credit bureaus and where bureaus exist, the information they provide may be limited, for legal and institutional reasons. For example, the average credit bureau in Latin America and the Caribbean complies with only half of best practices and covers only 41.2 percent of the adult population (Doing Business Report 2017).

Thus, even though credit scoring can improve SMEs’ access to credit, it may take years to pass legislation that will lead to improvements in the quality and depth of the information recorded by credit bureaus. Even after credit bureaus are set up and working well, building an accurate credit-scoring model often requires several years of credit history. Additionally, loan applicants are subject to a chicken-and-egg problem. Bureau information is most useful for making credit decisions regarding loan applicants with a detailed credit history, but applicants can only build that history by getting credit, for which they need a good credit history. Therefore, credit markets in many countries may have to rely on alternative lending technologies to screen potential clients.

One such alternative lending technology relies on psychometric testing to screen loan applicants. This paper studies the effectiveness of a psychometric tool for lending to SMEs in the context of a pilot exercise conducted by EFL, a fintech company founded in 2010, and a financial institution in Peru. EFL has developed an alternative credit information tool that can potentially be used by lenders to better screen loan applicants. This tool uses a psychometric application to assess the SME owner’s creditworthiness. According to EFL’s website, the tool has been used to screen close to 1 million loan applications in 15 countries across four continents as financial institutions are exploring how to incorporate the tool into their lending process.<sup>6</sup>

> 6 https://www.eflglobal.com/ accessed on March 27, 2017. In November 2017, EFL merged with Lenddo, which uses mobile & digital footprint data for credit scoring. For more information on LenddoEFL, see include1billion.com.

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The pilot exercise in Peru was the first implementation of the EFL tool in Latin America and relied on the “Africa v2 psychometric credit score”, which was based on information from 920 observations with loan repayment data, almost all of which were from Africa. The financial institution participating in the exercise, one of the five largest commercial banks in Peru (we refer to this bank as our “partner bank”), piloted the EFL tool starting in March 2012, with the goal of expanding its SME portfolio. At the time, our partner bank was not very active in the SME market. Its conventional screening method, which relied on a three-digit credit score from Equifax Peru and a site visit to the SME, was better suited for larger companies and resulted in a high rate of credit rejection in the SME segment.<sup>7</sup> During the pilot exercise, SME loan applicants were screened by the EFL tool and received a three-digit psychometric credit score. All applicants who achieved a score higher than a threshold set by our partner bank were offered a loan, making it possible to use a regression discontinuity (RD) design to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool.<sup>8</sup> The cutoff was set arbitrarily by our partner bank, as the bank had no historical information with which to set it. Applicants with a score below the EFL threshold were also offered a loan if they were approved under the bank’s conventional screening method. Only SMEs that were rejected under both screening methods were not offered a loan from our partner bank.

The way in which our partner bank applied the EFL tool differs from the way other financial institutions have used it. When credit bureau information exists, financial institutions typically use this information to approve prospective good credit clients and reject prospective bad credit clients. Some of these rejected applicants may however be profitable clients, particularly if they are rejected not because of bad credit bureau information but because of lack of information i.e. because they have thin credit bureau files. The EFL tool is often used to assess the creditworthiness of these thin file clients. Different from this typical use, our partner bank used the EFL tool to grant credit to all types of applicants including those with thin credit bureau files and those with bad credit bureau information.

A reason why our partner bank was willing to test the EFL using applicants with bad credit histories may be that in order to calibrate the model, they needed to observe a minimum number

> 7 Peru’s credit bureaus cover 100% of the adult population, so that everybody has a credit score, but for individuals without a credit history this credit score is primarily based on demographic information.

> 8 Figure A1 in the appendix shows the distribution of EFL scores for all SME loan applicants in our sample, below and above the selected threshold.

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of defaults. Additionally, the pilot project included a Risk Sharing Guarantee Facility financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). This Risk Sharing Facility covered up to a maximum fraction of the credit exposure (principal and interest) for guaranteed loans after exhausting the first loss amount to be assumed by our partner bank. This guarantee may also have influenced the effort exerted by our partner bank when monitoring loans and collecting payment.

We study the effectiveness of the EFL tool in increasing access to credit for loan applicants and we also ask whether this increased access results in worse repayment behavior. That is, we first investigate whether being offered a loan by our partner bank based on their EFL score increased the overall use of SME credit in our sample. Clearly, SMEs with an EFL score above the threshold were more likely to obtain a loan from our partner bank than those with an EFL score below this threshold. However, SMEs with an EFL score below the threshold could potentially have gotten a loan from other financial institutions different from our partner bank, in which case loan use may not increase. Second, we ask whether SMEs that were offered a loan based on the EFL tool exhibit repayment behavior different from SMEs that were not offered a loan based on the EFL tool.

We estimate the causal impact of the EFL tool on SME loan use and repayment behavior using several regression discontinuity (RD) methods around the EFL score threshold. For this analysis, we obtained detailed data on formal credit usage and credit scores from Equifax Peru. We use the Equifax credit score four years after the loan application as a measure of repayment behavior. Since the EFL tool may be particularly relevant for loan applicants who do not have a credit history, we conduct our analysis in the full sample of applicants, as well as in two subsamples: (i) applicants with thin credit bureau files and (ii) applicants with thick credit bureau files. We define applicants with a “thick credit bureau file” as those applicants whose Equifax score was based on their credit history and applicants with a “thin credit bureau file” as those whose Equifax score was based on demographics and other sources, such as the tax authority.

Our results show that in the full sample of applicants, the EFL tool increased the probability of taking out a new SME loan from any financial institution during the six months following the pilot loan application by up to 19 percentage points (compared to about 59 percent just below the EFL score threshold). When analyzing the subsamples, we see that the effect of the EFL tool on taking out a new SME loan during the six months following the application is much larger for applicants with thin credit bureau files, with an increase of up to 59 percentage points (compared 4
to about 10 percent just below the EFL score thresholds). For this subsample, the increase in borrowing resulted primarily from financial institutions other than our partner bank. This finding is consistent with staff from our partner bank stating that applicants used their loan approval letters to secure more advantageous loans from other institutions. For applicants with thick credit bureau files, we find no significant effect on overall short-run loan use. Instead, we find a significant increase in the probability of taking out a loan from our partner bank only. Thick file applicants were offered a loan from our partner bank based on the EFL tool even if they had low traditional credit scores, i.e. if they had bad credit information in their thick files. However, applicants with low credit scores are unlikely to have gotten loans from other institutions due to their bad credit history and thus loan approval letters from our partner bank would have been less useful for these applicants than for thin file applicants.

We also find that offering a loan to all applicants based on the EFL tool leads to worse repayment behavior vis-à-vis SMEs that were rejected by the EFL tool, in terms of applicants having lower Equifax credit scores three to four years after the loan application. This effect seems to be driven by applicants with thick credit bureau files, who took out a loan from our partner institution thanks to the EFL tool. Due to the specific setting of this pilot exercise, the negative effect on repayment behavior may thus stem from applicants with bad credit histories receiving loans and possibly from reduced monitoring and collection efforts due to the credit guarantee received by our partner bank. We do not find strong evidence of worse repayment behavior among applicants with thin credit bureau files. Finally, we study whether loan applicants receive additional loans in the medium-run (24 to 31 months after the pilot), but we do not find this to be the case in either the full sample or the subsamples.

Overall, our results suggest that psychometric credit scoring is a viable screening method for loan applicants who do not have a credit history. The way in which the EFL tool was used in the pilot exercise in Peru, i.e., by applying the psychometric tool to all clients irrespective of their credit history, also highlights the power of thick credit bureau information. That is, when bad credit information exists, it seems most beneficial for financial institutions to rely only on this information in their lending decisions. For loan applicants with thick credit bureau files there is another potential use of the EFL tool. Arráiz, Bruhn, and Stucchi (2017) find evidence that the EFL tool can lower the risk of the loan portfolio when used as a secondary screening mechanism for SMEs with a credit history. Similar to this paper, Arráiz, Bruhn, and Stucchi also conclude that 5
the EFL tool can allow lenders to offer credit to SMEs that do not have a credit history and who were rejected based on their conventional credit scores, without leading to more default. One limitation of their result is that it is not necessarily based on causal evidence, since it compares all SMEs who got loans thanks to the conventional screening method vs those who got loans based exclusively on their EFL score, without relying on an identification strategy that zooms in on groups with comparable characteristics as is the case with the RD method used here.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses the background and implementation of EFL’s psychometric credit scoring tool. Section 3 describes the data and Section 4 presents the identification strategy. Section 5 presents the empirical results. Finally, Section 6 concludes.

# **2. Background and implementation of EFL’s psychometric credit-scoring tool**

Psychometrics is a branch of psychology that designs assessment tools to measure personality traits, skills, knowledge, abilities, and attitudes. One advantage of psychometric tools is that they make it possible to screen many people at a low cost. Employers have long used these tools to select personnel. Research has found that tests of general intelligence (general mental ability), integrity, and conscientiousness—along with work sample tests—are the selection methods best able to predict overall job performance (Schmidt and Hunter, 1998). These tests, in combination, predict overall job performance better than a review of the candidate’s job experience, level of education, employment interview results, peer ratings, and reference checks (Schmidt and Hunter, 1998).

While the use of psychometrics in predicting job performance is common, there are other areas where these tools are starting to be applied to reduce screening costs. One example is in SME finance, where screening credit applicants is costly and time consuming and psychometric tools may offer a low-cost alternative. The use of psychometrics in screening credit applicants was first pioneered by the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL), which in 2006 started developing psychometric credit scores at Harvard University. Since then, EFL has expanded its business worldwide, collaborating with leading financial institutions, and winning global awards such as the African Business Award for Innovation and the G-20 SME Finance Challenge, which recognized EFL as one of the most innovative solutions to SME finance in the world.

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Relying on psychometric tools to screen SME loan applicants departs from the typical uses of such tools and thus required EFL to develop a psychometric credit-scoring tool from scratch. EFL researchers started by quantifying the characteristics of people who had defaulted on a past loan versus those who had not, and of people who owned small businesses with high versus low profits. The researchers grouped these characteristics into three categories: personality, intelligence, and integrity (Klinger, Khwaja, and del Carpio, 2013). They initially worked with a personality assessment based on the five-factor or “Big Five” model (Costa and McCrae, 1992), an intelligence assessment based on digit span recall tests (a component of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale), the Raven’s Progressive Matrices tests (Spearman, 1946), and an integrity assessment adapted from Bernardin and Cooke (1993).

The researchers’ hypothesis was that these assessments would allow them to identify the two main determinants of an entrepreneur’s intrinsic risk: the ability to repay a loan, and the willingness to do so. Entrepreneurial traits, measured via personality and intelligence tests, determine an entrepreneur’s ability to generate cash flows in the future—cash flows that can, in turn, be used to repay any debt owed. Honesty and integrity traits, measured via the integrity test, determine the entrepreneur’s willingness to pay, independent of the ability to do so.<sup>9</sup> After identifying questions that could potentially predict credit risk and trying out a first prototype of their tool, EFL developed a commercial application based on the responses to their tool and subsequent default behavior. The commercial application is based on the same quantitative methods used to generate conventional credit scores. It contains psychometric questions developed internally and licensed by third parties relating to individual attitudes, beliefs, integrity, and performance, as well as conventional questions and the collection of metadata (i.e., how the applicant interacted with the tool). The EFL tool has been constantly improving. The version that was used in the pilot we study was the “Africa v2 psychometric credit score”, and was initially created based on 920 pilot tests in Africa. The most recent version of this tool currently

> 9 An extensive body of literature has documented links between personality or intelligence tests and entrepreneurship or business performance (Ciavarella et al., 2004; De Mel et al., 2008; 2010; Djankov, McLiesh, and Shleifer, 2007; Zhao and Seibert, 2006). To date, the existing evidence on integrity and willingness to repay loans comes from EFL itself ( <mark>Klinger, Khwaja, and del Carpio, 2013</mark> ). A higher integrity score is related to a lower probability of default (honest entrepreneurs default less) and also to lower business profits (honest entrepreneurs are less profitable). Further evidence comes from a pilot of the EFL tool among Argentinean SMEs (Klinger, Castro, Szenkman, Khwaja, 2013). The EFL tool was administered to a random sample of 255 SMEs borrowing from a public bank. For each SME, the EFL responses were then compared to its repayment history with the bank. SMEs that were rejected by the psychometric-based scorecard were up to four times more likely to have defaulted on their past loans than those accepted by the scorecard.

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relies on 386,244 tests with loan repayment data, including tests from Latin America, where further refinements have been made according to the local context.

The EFL tool is designed to be similar to the qualitative assessments that loan officers perform. In practice, the SME owner who is in charge of the business decisions takes the test on a tablet, smartphone or PC. The application does not require access to the internet and thus allows the lenders to administer the tool either at a branch or in the field. The application uses many common techniques to prevent fraud, such as designing questions with no obvious right or wrong answers, randomizing the content of the application and the order in which questions appear to make each application different, or analyzing whether answers display unusual and unlikely patterns, to detect if for example, loan officers are assisting applicants.<sup>10</sup> The EFL application generates a 3-digit score that ranks the relative credit risk of the person who took the test. Lenders can use this score in different ways, such as setting cutoffs for approvals, or modifying the price, size, or other margins of a loan. Some examples of the types of questions that are asked in the EFL application are illustrated in appendix table A1.

In March 2012, our partner bank started to pilot EFL’s psychometric credit-scoring model in Peru, with the objective of expanding commercial lending to SMEs. At the time, our partner bank had only a small SME portfolio and they were interested in testing whether the EFL tool could help them enhance their credit approval process. SMEs who applied for a working capital loan (up to 18 months in duration with an average loan size of $3,855) were screened by the EFL tool as part of the application process. The EFL application took on average 45 minutes to complete (the current version takes 25 minutes). Applicants who achieved a score on the EFL application higher than a threshold defined by our partner bank were offered a loan, independently of whether or not they would have been offered a loan based on the conventional screening method used by the bank. Figure A1 in the appendix shows the distribution of EFL scores, below and above the selected threshold, for the SME loan applicants in our sample.

Applicants with a score below the EFL threshold were also offered a loan if they were approved under the institution’s conventional screening method. This conventional screening method relied on a credit score from Equifax Peru and a site visit to the SME. All applicants had an Equifax credit score, but for unbanked individuals, i.e. those who do not have a credit history, this credit score is primarily based on demographic information. Only SMEs that were rejected

> 10 Information from EFL website (https://www.eflglobal.com/).

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under both screening methods were not offered a loan from our partner bank during the pilot exercise. Appendix table A2 shows the number of loan applicants classified by whether they were rejected or accepted based on each screening method.

# **3. Data**

We obtained data on 1,909 SMEs that applied for a working capital loan with our partner bank between March 2012 and August 2013, from two sources. The first source is an EFL questionnaire that the bank administered at the time of loan application. These data include the EFL score and the date when the entrepreneur was screened by the EFL tool, as well as background characteristics, such as the applicant’s age, gender, and business sales. Our partner bank also shared with us the threshold EFL score it used to determine whether or not to offer a loan, and they indicated whether they would have offered the applicant a loan based on their conventional screening method.<sup>11</sup> In addition, for each loan applicant, the data include the national ID number (DNI) and, if their business is registered under the business name instead of the individual’s name, it also includes the business’s tax payer number (RUC). Out of the 1,909 SMEs in the data, all provided their DNI and 1,327 also provided an RUC. However, for 20 SMEs, the DNIs and RUCs are inconsistent with each other, suggesting typos. We drop these observations from the sample to avoid using wrong information from our second data source. We also drop 6 observations where two DNIs reported the same RUC, that is, three SMEs where two co-owners seem to each have applied for a loan. In these cases, it is not possible to cleanly assign an EFL score to the SME as the unit of observation. Thus, we end up with a sample of 1,883 SMEs.<sup>12</sup> Our second data source corresponds to credit information owned by Equifax Peru, the largest credit bureau in the country. For the DNIs and RUCs in the EFL data, we purchased five years of monthly information on borrowing from Equifax, covering the time period from May 2011 to April 2016.<sup>13</sup> One of Equifax’s main sources of information is the Peruvian Bank Supervisor’s (SBS) _Central de Riesgos_ . SBS collects data directly from all regulated financial institutions on a monthly

> 11 For unknown reasons, this variable is missing for 21 loan applicants in our sample.

> 12 The fraction of the sample dropped is not significantly different below and above the EFL threshold.

> 13 By law, Equifax is not allowed to provide data that is older than five years.

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basis, covering the universe of commercial banks, as well as all regulated non-bank financial institutions, such as _Cajas Municipales_ , _Cajas Rurales_ and microfinance institutions.<sup>14</sup> For each ID number in any given month, we obtained the total amount borrowed from each SBS supervised financial institution in Peru. The total amount borrowed is disaggregated into eight different loan types: microloans, loans to small firms, loans to medium firms, loans to large firms, loans to corporations, non-revolving consumption loans, revolving consumption loans, and mortgages. If a borrower has more than one loan of the same type with the same intuition, Equifax reports only the sum of these loans, with no information on how many loans constitute this total amount. Given our sample of SME loan applicants, most loans correspond to consumption credit and SME loans (which include loans to micro, small and medium-sized firms), with 78% and 84% of the SMEs in our sample having these types of loans. We drop information on loans to large firms, corporations and mortgages. Less than 1% of the SMEs in our sample have loans to large firms or corporations, and about 8.5% have mortgages. We keep information on consumption loans to examine whether loan applicants substitute SME loans for consumption loans.

Equifax also calculates credit scores for consumer loans, microfinance loans, and business loans. Our partner bank used the microfinance loan score in their conventional screening method. Equifax staff also advised us that for SMEs, the microfinance loan score would be the most relevant one. We thus purchased the microfinance loan score for two points in time (i) the month when the SME applied for the loan with our partner bank, to be used as a background variable, and (ii) April 2016, to be used as an outcome variable. For the credit score in the month when the SME applied for the loan, Equifax included a dummy variable indicating whether this score was primarily based on their credit history, i.e. a “thick file,” or on demographics and other sources, such as the Peruvian tax authority (SUNAT), i.e. a “thin file”.

To measure loan use based on the Equifax data, we created a dummy equal to one if either the DNI or RUC associated with a loan applicant shows an increase in the amount outstanding from a given financial institution for a given loan type (where the increase could be either from an amount of 0 if the applicant did not already have this type of loan from this financial institution or otherwise an increase from a positive amount). We use four different dummy variables corresponding to the following loan types: (i) SME loan from any financial institution (including

> 14 For any given month, these institutions report information on their loan portfolio on the 23rd of the following month, so that data are available with about a two month time lag.

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our partner bank), (ii) SME loan from our partner bank, (iii) SME loan from a financial institution different from our partner bank, and (iv) consumption loan from any financial institution. We define these four dummies for three different time periods: (i) the pre-application period, comprising 6 months before the loan application, (ii) the immediate post-application period, comprising 6 months after the loan application, and (iii) the medium run, comprising two years after the loan application, that is, loan outcomes 24 months to 31 months after the SME applied for a loan. The immediate post-application period allows 6 months for loans to be processed and disbursed and also provides some time for applicants to potentially shop around with other banks for other loan offers. Given that the maximum loan term reported by our partner bank was 18 months, we then define the medium run as starting at 24 months, i.e. 18 months after the initial 6 months, to arrive at a time when applicants may want to renew their loans. We chose the endpoint of 31 months since this is the last month for which we have data for the full sample.<sup>15</sup> Table A3 in the appendix provides summary statistics for our background variables as well as pre-application loan use and credit scores. Column 1 in panel A shows that the loan applicants in our sample were on average 39 years old and 50 percent of them were female. Average annual business revenues were about US$12,000. Close to 20 percent of applicants would not have received a loan offer from our partner bank based on the conventional screening method. At the time of the application, 22 percent of loan applicants did not have credit with a formal financial institution.

Column 1 in panel B of table A3 reports Equifax data for the pre-application period. About 52 percent took out a new SME loan from any financial institution during the 6 months preceding the loan application and about 43 percent took out a new consumption loan. Almost all new SME loans came from banks other than our partner institution, which reflects the fact that our partner institution was not very active in the SME segment before the EFL pilot.

# **4. Identification strategy**

We estimate the effect of being offered a loan using the EFL tool on loan use and repayment behavior using a non-parametric regression discontinuity (RD) design. Let �� be the psychometric

> 15 As a robustness check, we also used two alternative definitions of loan use: (i) a dummy equal to one if either the DNI or RUC associated with a loan applicant has any SME loan amount outstanding from a given financial institution and (ii) the total volume of SME loans from all financial institutions. Our main results with these alternative measures are reported in the appendix and are similar to the results using the loan increase dummy.

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for the time (month and year) when the SME applied for a loan. We report robust bias-corrected p-values which account for the bias involved in estimating the optimal bandwidth.

As an additional robustness check, we also implement a randomization inference method following Cattaneo, Frandsen and Titiunik (2015) and Cattaneo, Titiunik and Vazquez-Bare (2016a), with the Stata _rdrandinf_ command described in Cattaneo, Titiunik and Vazquez-Bare (2016b). We select the window for the local randomization with the _rdwinselect_ command using our four background variables listed in panel A of table A3 (age, gender, sales, and whether the application would have been approved under the conventional screening method). We start with a 2 point window around the EFL score threshold. The command then selects the largest window in which these covariates are balanced according to p-values calculated with randomization inference methods. The selected window size is 4 points around the threshold. Our results from the randomization inference method thus represent the effects of the EFL tool on loan use and repayment behavior in a very small bandwidth around the EFL score threshold. Column 2 in panels A, B and C of table A3 shows summary statistics for our background and pre-application loan use variables for applicants who scored within 4 points below the threshold. Overall, the characteristics of this small sample are quite similar to those of the full sample (column 1 in panels A, B and C of table A3).

As a visual check of our results, we also show regression discontinuity plots using the _rdplot_ Stata command developed by Calonico, Cattaneo, and Titiunik (2014b). We plot the data for a bandwidth of 20 around the EFL score threshold with a global polynomial of order one and 95 percent confidence intervals for each bin (we let the command select the number of bins using its data-driven procedure with the default setting).

The RD estimation relies on the assumption that our outcomes of interest would be continuous at the EFL score threshold if our partner bank had not offered them a loan based on scoring above this threshold. While we cannot test this assumption directly, we can examine whether applicants’ background characteristics and pre-application loan use are continuous at the EFL score threshold. The main idea behind this test is that if those characteristics are not continuous it would be difficult to claim continuity in the outcome variables in the absence of the treatment. Columns 3 through 10 in table A3 report the estimated discontinuities at the threshold and corresponding p-values from the four different RD methods described above (local polynomial regression with optimal bandwidth for polynomial order 0, 1, 2, and randomization inference). We 13
do not find a statistically significant discontinuity in the variables in table A3 for any of the methods. This finding is also consistent with the fact that the threshold was selected by the bank and not announced to borrowers and therefore borrowers were not able to behave strategically.

# **5. Results**

Table 1 displays the RD impact estimates for the effect of the EFL tool on loan use in the immediate post-application period. The structure of this table is the same as for table A3, showing the averages of the outcome variables for the whole sample and just below the EFL score threshold in columns 1 and 2, respectively. Columns 3 through 10 display the impact estimates from four different RD methods, with the corresponding bandwidths and number of observations. All methods show a statistically significant increase in the probability of taking out a new SME loan from any financial institution during the six months following the loan application. The magnitude of this effect ranges from a 14.9 to a 19.1 percentage point increase, relative to an average probability of 58.6 percent just below the EFL score threshold.

Figure 1 plots the RD graph for short-run loan use. Figure 1A illustrates the finding from table A3 Panel B that the probability of taking out a new SME loan from any financial institution did not display a discontinuity at the EFL score threshold during the six months _before_ the loan application. In contrast, figure 1B shows a clear upward jump in the probability of taking out a new SME loan from any financial institution at the threshold during the six months _after_ the loan application. Consistent with the results in table 1, visual inspection of the data thus also suggests that the EFL tool increased loan use for applicants above the threshold.

Figure 1B and the numbers in table 1 show that a maximum of about 78 percent of SMEs above the EFL threshold ended up taking out a new SME loan. Although all of them had applied for a loan and were offered a loan, some applicants may have decided against taking out the loan due to changes in circumstances or the conditions they were offered. In conversations with staff from our partner bank, they stated that some applicants used their loan approval letters to secure more advantageous loans from other institutions. To test this hypothesis, table 1 examines the impact of the EFL tool on obtaining a new loan from our partner bank and from other financial institutions separately. The effect on loan use appears to be driven entirely by new loans from our partner bank, where the EFL tool almost doubles the probability of obtaining a new loan (by up to 14
32 percentage points from about 17 percent below the EFL score threshold). The effect of the EFL tool on loans from other financial institutions is positive, but it is not statistically significant.

The last question we examine in table 1 is whether the increase in SME loan use was accompanied by a decrease in the other frequently used credit product in our sample, i.e. consumptions loans. The hypothesis here is that applicants may use consumption loans as a source of finance if they are not able to obtain SME loans. However, we do not find any evidence that the probability of taking out a consumption loan changes due to the EFL tool for the whole sample.

Since the information added by the EFL tool may be particularly useful for clients that have no credit history, i.e. those with “thin files” in the credit bureau, the impact on access may be greater for this group. To test this hypothesis, we replicate the analysis from table 1 after splitting the sample into those with thin and thick credit bureau files (as defined in section 3). Table 2 shows the RD impact estimates on short-run loan use for applicants with thin credit bureau files. The estimates for taking out an SME loan from any financial institution are two to three times as big as in the full sample, ranging from 34.2 to 53.5 percentage points. The table also shows that this effect is driven by financial institutions other than our partner bank. That is, obtaining a loan offer from our partner bank appears to have helped applicants with thin credit bureau files to obtain loans from other institutions. Table 3 shows the short-run loan use results for applicants with thick credit bureau files. Here, we see no significant effect on SME loan use from other financial institutions, but we find an increase in the probability of having a loan from our partner bank. These findings are likely due to the fact that applicants with an EFL score above the threshold were offered a loan from our partner bank even if they had low traditional credit scores, i.e. if they had bad credit information in their thick files. However, these applicants with low credit scores are unlikely to have gotten loans from other institutions due to their bad credit history and thus loan approval letters from our partner bank would have been less useful for these applicants than for thin file applicants. The result in tables 2 and 3 thus confirm the hypothesis that the EFL tool was particularly useful for increasing access to credit for applicants with thin credit bureau files.

Tables A4 through A6 in the appendix examine the effects of the EFL tool on short-run loan use for our alternative measures of loan use: a dummy for having an SME loan and the total SME loan volume. Table A4 includes all applicants, while table A5 includes applicants with thin credit bureau files and table A6 applicants with thick credit bureau files only. The results mirror those in tables 1 through 3. The EFL tool increases the probability of having a loan and the loan 15
volume from any financial institution for applicants with thin credit bureau files and these increases seems to be primarily driven by institutions other than our partner bank. For applicants with thick credit bureau files, the EFL tool increases the probability of having a loan and loan volume from our partner bank only.

Table 4 examines the effect of the EFL tool on repayment behavior as measured by the Equifax credit score in April 2016 (about four years after the loan application).<sup>16</sup> We find that offering a loan based on the EFL tool leads to a statistically significant decrease in applicants’ April 2016 credit score, ranging from 113 to 241 points, relative to 537 points below the EFL score threshold. There was no statistical difference around the threshold in Equifax credit scores at the time of application (table A3, panel B). And even though the credit score may decrease as loan use increases since current debt amounts are one factor that goes into calculating the credit score, by April 2016 the applicants in our sample should have repaid the loans they obtained as part of the pilot exercise (we do not find an effect on medium-run loan use, as discussed below).

Figure 2 illustrates the effect of the EFL tool on the Equifax credit score visually. At the time of the loan application, there was no discontinuity in the credit score of SMEs in our sample at the EFL score threshold (figure 2A). In April 2016, however, the credit score showed a downward jump at the threshold (figure 2B).

Table 4 also shows that the effect of the EFL tool on the Equifax credit score is only statistically significant for applicants with thick credit bureau files and the coefficients are larger for these applicants than for those with thin credit bureau files. This reduction in the Equifax credit score among thick file applicants, which is potentially due to worse repayment behavior, could be caused by two factors (i) our partner bank offered loans to applicants with bad credit histories if their EFL score was above the threshold and (ii) the portfolio of loans from our partner bank that were part of the pilot exercise had a credit guarantee which may have lowered monitoring and collection incentives, even though the guarantee would be triggered after exhausting the first loss amount to be assumed by our partner bank. As shown in table 3, loan use for thick file applicants increased only through our partner bank (unlike loan use for thin file applicants which increased through other financial institutions), which makes the two factors above particularly relevant for thick file clients.

> 16 As noted previously, the Equifax score is available for all SME loan applicants in our sample.

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Given the positive effect on short-term loan use and the negative effect on the Equifax credit score in the case of thick file applicants, we now ask how the EFL tool affected mediumrun loan use. Table 5 shows that the RD analysis finds no effect of the EFL tool on loan use 24 to 31 months after the initial loan application. Some of the estimated coefficients are positive, while others are negative, but for the most part, they are all close to zero and none of them is statistically significant. Table A7 in the appendix shows the corresponding results for our two other measures of loan use. We obtained similar results for the subsamples of thin and thick file applicants (results are not shown).

# **6. Conclusions**

We study the use of a psychometric credit application to better assess credit risk and extend credit to SMEs. The psychometric credit application was developed by EFL with the goal of identifying traits that characterize the credit risk posed by loan recipients, traits that make it possible to select loan applicants who can generate enough cash flow to service their debt and who are willing to repay their debt.

In the context of a pilot exercise conducted by one of the five largest banks in Peru, we find that the EFL tool can increase SME loan use in the short-run. The increase in SME loan use is particularly large for applicants with thin credit bureau files, usually shunned by the formal financial sector. For this group, we find that the increase in access is not accompanied by a statistically significant reduction in the Equifax credit score (our measure of repayment behavior) suggesting the EFL tool is a viable screening method for this group.

For applicants with thick credit bureau files, the EFL tool does not lead to increased access other than from our partner bank and it does lead to a statistically significant reduction in the Equifax credit score, which may in part be due to worse repayment behavior. Potential reasons for this negative effect are that (i) the EFL tool was applied to all applicants regardless of their credit history and applicants with bad credit histories were offered a loan if their EFL score was above the threshold and (ii) our partner bank may have exerted less effort when monitoring loans and collecting payments during the pilot project due to the credit guarantee that covered the pool of eligible loans―after exhausting the first loss amount to be assumed by our partner bank. Our findings here highlight the importance of credit history information for assessing credit risk and serving the SME market.

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