In this paper, to begin with, we define soft information as qualitative, subjective information produced by banks through the establishment of long-term lending relationships. We then highlight the importance of soft information for cooperative and social banks in the screening, pricing and...

In this paper, to begin with, we define soft information as qualitative, subjective information produced by banks through the establishment of long-term lending relationships. We then highlight the importance of soft information for cooperative and social banks in the screening, pricing and...

This paper analyzes whether soft information improves predictive accuracy of a bank’s internal rating by better forecasting future credit defaults. We use a unique hand-collected database of 389 small loans granted by a French social bank (credit cooperative) dealing with (very) small...