数字信贷对传统商业银行的影响

The Impact of Digital Lending on Traditional Commercial Banks

党的二十大报告指出要构建高水平社会主义市场经济体制,推进金融体系稳定健康发展是实现这一目标的内在要求。在数字技术迅猛发展的背景下,作为金融体系重要组成部分的商业银行的发展问题一直广受关注。本文基于地区金融发展和微观家庭金融调查数据,分别从宏观和微观层面探讨数字信贷发展水平对商业银行业务的影响。研究发现,在宏观层面,数字信贷和银行网点扩张之间存在“U”形关系,这种影响在不同地区和不同类型的银行中存在异质性,具体表现在农村地区、经济欠发达地区以及西部地区的数字信贷和银行网点扩张间的“U”形关系更加明显,同时农村商业银行的网点扩张与数字信贷发展水平之间呈现明显的“U”形关系。在微观层面,本文发现数字信贷与家庭正规贷款规模之间也呈“U”形关系,这是对宏观实证结论的进一步验证。本文为理解数字信贷发展对商业银行的影响提供了宏观和微观两个层面的证据,“U”形关系的发现也解释了相关文献的部分争议。

The rapid growth of digital finance in China has attracted considerable attention.An interesting question in this context is how the development of digital finance will affect traditional banking institutions;however,the empirical literature has been ambiguous regarding this question.While some scholars believe that the rapid expansion of digital finance has imposed competitive pressures on traditional banks,thus threatening their businesses in different channels,others believe that commercial banks are successfully embracing and actively adopting digital technology to upgrade their financial business and improve business efficiency.As an important part of digital finance,the emergence and development of digital lending by non-banking financial institutions have intensified competition in the credit market.The impact of digital lending on the traditional financial industry(as represented by commercial banks)is worth exploring.In this study,the nonlinear relationship between the development of digital lending and the expansion of bank branches is explored based on county-level macroeconomic panel data from 2014 to 2019 and the China Household Finance Survey in 2017 and 2019.Two-way fixed-effect model and pooled ordinary least squares model are applied in this study to explore the nonlinear relationship between digital lending and bank branch expansion at macro and micro levels,respectively.At the macro level,there is a U-shaped relationship between digital lending and bank branch expansion.In the early stage,the development of digital lending negatively impacts the expansion of bank branches,suggesting that digital lending acts as a competitor to commercial banks.However,with the further development of digital lending,these negative impacts gradually fade,and credit lending starts to positively impact the development of commercial banking.Heterogeneous analysis shows that this impact of digital lending on bank branch expansion is different across different types of banks and different regions.These results show that digital lending by non-financial institutions has a stronger impact on rural commercial banks.The U-shaped relationship between digital lending and bank branch expansion is more prominent in rural areas,economically underdeveloped areas,and the western regions of China.At the micro level,the findings corroborate the existence of a U-shaped relationship between the development of digital lending in the region and the debt structure in the family at the household level.The early development of digital lending will significantly reduce the use of formal banking loans in the household.However,when digital lending develops to a certain level,both the scale and proportion of formal banking loans borrowed by families will increase.This finding further verifies the conclusion based on macro-level empirical evidence.This study contributes to the research on banking and digital finance in the following aspects:First,few studies have explored the impact of digital credit development on the traditional banking industry.Based on a county-level panel dataset,the impact of digital lending development on bank expansion is systematically assessed,and the challenges faced by traditional financial institutions under the"new finance"format are explored.The findings enrich research in related fields.This study reflects the development of regional financial markets,especially rural financial markets in a more accurate way.Second,the heterogeneous impact of digital lending on the expansion of bank branches in different regions and different types of banks is discussed.Third,by studying the debt structure of micro-level households,digital lending was found to have a similar impact on the borrowing of formal banking loans by families,which further verifies the impact of digital lending on traditional banking business.Fourth,the U-shaped relationship between digital lending and bank branch expansion identified in this study addresses the controversy in the relevant literature to a certain extent.This study shows that digital lending development and traditional banking development do not follow a simple linear relationship,which provides new insights for future research in related fields.