THE INFLUENCES OF BANK-FIRM RELATIONSHIPS IN CREDIT ACCESS OF SMES

Since many SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) lack internal resources, they usually look for external credits that banks are the main providers of. However, most of those businesses’ main concern is to gain credit access since these businesses are not very efficient when minimizing information asymmetries between them and their lenders. Thus, relationship lending that includes close interactions, long-term relationships, and, close ties between SMEs and banks might reduce information asymmetries and might provide easier credit access conditions for SMEs. In this regard, this research aims to investigate the positive association between the length of the relationship, the closeness of communication, the house bank status, and access to bank credit. In line with this selected purpose, the researcher created an online questionnaire and collected data from 479 SMEs operating in Turkey. To examine the specified relationships, the researcher performed Binary Logistic Regression analyses. The results confirm the positive relationships between the variables of relationship lending and access to finance. Therefore, SMEs focusing on socializing and networking activities with banks might receive advantages to gain easier credit access conditions. The reasons for these results might be related to cultural, and executive-firm-specific characteristics, including the structure of society, the sectoral experiences, and the length of doing business, respectively.