A protective shield for banks: How fintech curbs earnings manipulation through information transparency and financing constraints

IF 9.8 1区经济学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

International Review of Financial Analysis Pub Date : 2025-09-08 DOI:10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104622

Wenyi Li , Tang Li , Wenhao Shi , Yuqing Long , Wenyu Liu

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Fintech is an important tool to detect firm earnings manipulation and reduce financial risks. Based on the panel dataset of listed firms in China from 2012 to 2022, this study empirically examines the impact of bank fintech innovation on firms' earnings management. This study initially finds that firm borrowers' earnings management is significantly lower when their bank lenders adopt more fintech innovation. After fully eliminating issues of measurement errors, omitted variable bias, and reverse causality, the magnitude and significance of baseline regression results do not change much, which establish the casual link between bank lenders' fintech innovation and earnings management of firm borrowers. Mechanism analyses indicate that fintech innovation can effectively mitigate the information asymmetry between bank lenders and firm borrowers, thereby increasing information transparency to inhibit firms' earnings management. Otherwise, fintech innovation can efficiently enhance credit accessibility, which helps to alleviate financing constraints and reduce firms' earnings manipulation. Compared to other firms, the impacts of fintech innovation on firms' earnings management are more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), firms with multiple major creditors, and regions with more rapid fintech development. In order to mitigate financial risks, policymakers should provide more incentives for commercial banks to accelerate fintech innovation.

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银行的保护盾：金融科技如何通过信息透明和融资约束遏制盈利操纵

金融科技是发现企业盈余操纵和降低财务风险的重要工具。本研究基于2012 - 2022年中国上市公司面板数据集，实证检验了银行金融科技创新对公司盈余管理的影响。本研究初步发现，当银行贷款人采用更多的金融科技创新时，企业借款人的盈余管理显著降低。在充分消除计量误差、遗漏变量偏差和反向因果关系等问题后，基线回归结果的幅度和显著性变化不大，这就建立了银行贷款人金融科技创新与企业借款人盈余管理之间的偶然联系。机制分析表明，金融科技创新可以有效缓解银行贷款人和企业借款人之间的信息不对称，从而提高信息透明度，抑制企业的盈余管理。否则，金融科技创新可以有效地提高信贷可及性，这有助于缓解融资约束，减少企业的盈余操纵。与其他企业相比，金融科技创新对企业盈余管理的影响在非国有企业、拥有多个主要债权人的企业和金融科技发展较快的地区更为明显。为了降低金融风险，政策制定者应该为商业银行加速金融科技创新提供更多激励。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

International Review of Financial Analysis BUSINESS, FINANCE-

CiteScore

10.30

自引率

9.80%

发文量

366

期刊介绍： The International Review of Financial Analysis (IRFA) is an impartial refereed journal designed to serve as a platform for high-quality financial research. It welcomes a diverse range of financial research topics and maintains an unbiased selection process. While not limited to U.S.-centric subjects, IRFA, as its title suggests, is open to valuable research contributions from around the world.