Borrowing Challenges for Minorities: How Lending Technologies Affect Discrimination in the SME Credit Market

Can relationship-lending technology be used to overcome discrimination, as the Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis suggests? Or should minorities stay away from the bank? Using a sample of SMEs from the Survey of Small Business Finances 2003, this article shows that though relationship-lending technology generally reduces the spread and probability of the need to provide collateral for a loan, use of such technology actually leads to greater discrimination against minorities. Asians are the most negatively affected by this effect, followed by Afro-Americans and Hispanics. However, this effect occurs only when the length of the relationship is short; it tends to disappear when relationships are longer. With regard to the area in which a firm is located, there is less discrimination in areas with high minority population rates than in areas with low minority population rates. These results are robust with regard to the self-selection problem.