Does ICT adoption improves access to credit for small enterprises?

The aim of our empirical analysis is to seek whether there is some significant and positive relationship between firms’ ICT adoption and the amount of bank financing they are able to obtain. We carry out the analysis using data at the bank-firm level for a large sample of small firms. Data have been collected through the 9th UniCredit Survey on Italian enterprises with at most 5 million of annual turnover, realized in the second semester of 2012. This wave of the survey provides detailed information regarding firms’ Ict adoption, their financial needs, and the relationship with the banking system. In particular, we investigate whether and to what extent small firms’ Ict adoption may affect the growth rate of credit they receive from UniCredit1 (the Bank, hereafter) in the period 2010-2012. We find that, in general, the Bank actually accords better credit conditions to small entrepreneurs who use Ict more intensively in the conduction of their business activities. More in detail, we observe that a higher growth rate of credit accorded by the Bank is associated with small enterprises hiring computer technicians, adopting extranet infrastructures, and exploiting online relationship with the banking system. There is no substantial effect, instead, regarding the simple use of Internet, of advanced software systems and of Ict tools which generally help improving the conduction of managerial and administrative tasks within the firm. We motivate our empirical outcome with the fact that a more intense use of Ict is likely to influence firms’ credit worthiness