Lending Problems of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: the Impact of the Soft Loan Program for SME on the Bank Credit Risk

Lending to small and medium-sized businesses seems to be a promising direction for the state, both as a source of tax revenues and a driver of competition and the growth of product quality. Small and medium-sized enterprises are considered as fast-growing companies that entail the development of individual industries and bring the economy of the regions and the country to a new level. This study will focus on the "Loan program for stimulating lending to small and medium-sized businesses" from 2015, which is a joint project of the SME Corporation , the Ministry of economic development of Russia and the Bank of Russia. The mail objective is to identify the trend of the bank credit risk depending on the implementation of the program of preferential lending to small and medium-sized businesses. We build a regression model of panel data consisting of 59 authorized banks for the period from April 1, 2013 to October 1, 2019 and expect to determine the negative impact of the implemented program on the credit risk due to the non-transparency and risk of small and medium-sized business customers.