As far as we know, this is the first time the question has been asked, albeit an essential one! – wondering: is a credit application likely to receive different responses depending on the account manager handling it? According to Jérémie Bertrand and Aurore Burietz, finance professors at the IESEG School of Management, the answer is yes.
Suffice it to say that the newly published paper by these two professors points to a bias that is as important as it is generally ignored. Because, according to the general opinion, with which most clients probably agree, account managers are, in terms of the final decision that a credit application will receive, almost interchangeable. Only the decision criteria of your institution apply.
However, things are not that simple: the biases that individual relationship managers may have influence their decisions.
Having questioned 32 account managers of a French bank about the treatment of the information presented to them (income or billing elements, presentation of the project for which financing is requested), the authors were able to observe that the relationship of importance given to this information varies from relationship manager to relationship manager. In fact, as expected, but it was still a matter of analyzing it precisely, the quantitative elements will be considered more or less discriminatory. Insurmountable barrier in some cases, a lower than expected income level, for example, can however be put into perspective with the situation of the applicants in other cases. In other words, the customers’ direct relationship with their relationship manager is not equally important in all cases.
However, such bias is likely to affect all customers, the authors note. Even a good file may not benefit from the best terms because it doesn’t exactly tick all the financial analysis boxes, if the account manager just looks at it. Whereas an account manager who takes more into account qualitative information will tend to consistently grant credit at a lower rate.
Different decisions in the same bank
In total, the same client can obtain two different decisions within the same bank due to the existence of prejudices that alter the decision-making of the account manager with whom he meets.
But what to do there? In recent years, some banks (very rare) allow you to choose your account manager. But how do you know in advance how you will process a request?
A subjectivity bias is inevitable when the banking relationship is one of trust: the criteria for founding it can only vary in importance depending on the account managers. Traditionally, customers respond by contacting several banks, while the names of more or less “sympathetic” account managers circulate. Two decisive realities that are also almost completely ignored in statistical terms.
In addition, with the automation of the qualification and award processes, account managers have less and less control over decisions and act more as intermediaries between their clients and decision-making centers. This certainly plays into the consideration of certain criteria and it is a pity that a study, however excellent, does not take them into account. This underlines in its own way that, in a sector such as banking where reports and studies accumulate without knowing what to read, the lack of basic information regarding the relationship with the client continues to be overwhelming.
Source: BFM TV
