Isabelle Roland, Yukiko Saito and Philip Schnattinger

The Bank of England Agenda for Research (BEAR) sets the key areas for new research at the Bank over the coming years. This post is an example of issues considered under the Prudential Architecture Theme which focuses on the evolving regulatory structures and fresh strategic issues for regulators and supervisors.

Interventions in corporate credit markets have featured prominently in the policy response to crisis episodes over the last two decades. Loan forbearance features prominently among those interventions by lenders and/or regulators. It is a practice whereby banks grant temporary relief to struggling borrowers, to avoid default. On balance, the literature is critical of loan forbearance in the corporate sector because of its potential to contribute to zombification – a situation where bank lending keeps unproductive firms alive, resulting in lower aggregate total factor productivity. Results from our new paper show that forbearance lending in combination with business restructuring plans can provide temporary relief for struggling firms, safeguarding output and employment, without contributing to the zombification of the corporate sector. Note that our research is focused on the impact of forbearance on the corporate sector; the impact of forbearance on lenders is a separate question outside the scope of our paper.