Artificial intelligence and relationship lending by Leonardo Gambacorta, Fabiana Sabatini and Stefano Schiaffi published by BIS (2/2025).
We study the interaction between banks’ adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in credit scoring and relationship lending. Using a unique dataset on Italian banks’ investments in AI for the purpose of integrating their credit scoring techniques, matched with credit register data from one year before and one year after the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis, we find that AI investments help banks mitigate the typical countercyclical effects of relationship lending on firms’ credit supply, as well as on their investment and employment decisions.
