Lenders profit more when supply information is shared unevenly
Asymmetric Information in Dynamic Lending Games
Computer Science and Game Theory
Summary
The paper looks at how lenders share loans when they know different amounts about their own and rivals’ supply. It finds that giving some lenders, but not all, information about others’ available loans can increase total profits without changing how many loans are made. Who gets this information matters depending on how many loans are needed and the size of each lender. This means sharing supply details isn’t always best for borrowers or lenders—it depends on who learns what.
What this means in practice
- •For financial platform operators: Decide which lenders to inform about competitors’ loan availability to optimize overall lender profits and borrower fees based on demand and supply balance.
- •For loan market designers: Create lending rules that strategically disclose supply information to different lenders to maximize revenues without affecting loan volume.
Authors
Kristijan Atanasov, Frederik Mallmann-Trenn, Carmine Ventre
Abstract
We study a dynamic lending game with limited but reusable supply. Borrower arrivals and loan durations are stochastic. Demand is allocated cheapest-first, subject to available supply, so a lender's quote affects both its current payoff and its ability to serve future borrowers. Motivated by industry practice, we study this problem through the lens of information disclosure: Lenders observe either only their own available supply or also their rivals' aggregate available supply. We ask how providing this information to all, some or none of the lenders affects payoffs as demand varies relative to supply, and how these effects change when a fixed total supply is divided among different numbers of lenders. Interestingly, in the case of asymmetric information disclosure, total payoffs can increase, while total lending remains the same. We identify sufficient mathematical regimes in which this phenomenon occurs. Who receives supply information matters differently as demand rises. For the case of two lenders, informing only the larger lender yields higher total lender payoff at lower demand, while informing only the smaller lender can yield the highest total lender payoff at higher demand. For a platform deciding which lenders can observe rival supply, the results suggest that disclosure can change the fees paid by borrowers without changing how much is lent. Wider access to supply information need not lower those fees: its effect depends on who receives the information and the balance between demand and supply.