We examine the role played by Mutual Guarantee Institutions (MGIs) in the lending policies undertaken by banks at the peak of the Great Crisis of 2007–2009. We address this issue by using a large database on Italian firms built from the credit files of UniCredit banking Group and focusing on small business. We provide an empirical analysis of the determinants of the probability that a borrowing firm will suffer financial tension and obtain two main innovative findings. First, we find that small firms supported by MGIs less likely experienced financial tensions even at that time of utmost financial stress. Second, our empirical evidence shows that MGIs played a signaling role beyond the simple provision of collateral. This latter finding suggests that the information provided by MGIs turned out to be key for bank–firm relations as scoring and rating systems – being typically based on pro-cyclical indicators – had become less informative during the crisis.

This paper investigates SME financing in Italy. The literature distinguishes between two main different lending technologies (LTs) for SMEs: transactional and relationship LTs. We find that banks lend to SMEs by using both LTs together, independently of the size and proximity of borrowers. Moreover, we show that the use of soft information decreases the probability of firms being credit rationed. Finally, we find that more soft information is produced when the bank uses relationship LT as primary technology individually or coupled with transactional LT. Our results support the view that LTs can be complementary, but reject the hypothesis that substitutability among LTs is somehow possible for outsiders by means of hardening of soft information.