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Types Of Collateral Used For Business Lending

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When it comes to the type of collateral used for business lending, real estate is the most common one irrespective of the firm size. About 40% of all banks rank real estate as the most preferred type of collateral used for business lending in small, medium and large firms. The next most important forms of collateral used across all firm sizes are cash and other liquid assets (approx. 22%) followed by (10-15 percent of banks) personal and bank guarantees.

When banks across developed and developing countries are compared, it was observed that developed countries rank real estate as the most important type of collateral more frequently than the developing countries. About 56% of the developed country banks rank real estate as the most important collateral type for business lending to small firms compared to only 37 % of the developing country banks. In case of developing countries, the banks consider a higher variety of collaterals as important. Though cash, liquid assets, personal and bank guarantees are rated as important types of collateral by banks in both developed and developing countries, land and equipment are rated as important collateral types only in developing country banks (Little less than 15%).

Significant differences exist across the type of bank ownership regarding the type of assets used as collateral. For foreign-owned banks, the predominant asset used for collateral is real estate (54% of banks have ranked it at top). But for domestic privately-owned

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