JOB  MARKET  PAPER

Data as Collateral: Open Banking for Small Business Lending [SSRN]

Awards: Brattle Group Ph.D. Candidate Award for Outstanding Research, WFA 2025
              Runner-up, Philipp Sandner Award in Digital Finance Research, Frankfurt School 2025
 
Scheduled for WFA 2025, EFA 2025, Stanford SITE Conference 2025, SFA 2025, World Congress of the Econometric Society 2025, CEPR RPN FinTech and Digital Currencies Annual Meeting 2025, Future of Financial Information Conference 2025, CEPR Endless Summer Conference on Financial Intermediation and Corporate Finance 2025, Bocconi-CEPR-JCF Information, Contracts and Firms Conference 2025, IBEFA Summer Meeting 2025, Annual Conference of the Banco Central do Brasil 2025, AEFIN Finance Forum 2025

Abstract: Open banking enables small businesses to share their bank financial data with potential lenders. I examine the effect of open banking on collateralization in small business lending. For identification, I exploit institutional features of the UK’s open banking policy that creates a discontinuity in firms’ eligibility to share data. Using a novel loan-level dataset covering the entire UK secured business loan market, I document that open banking eases the pledge of assets like accounts receivable and inventory. Firms eligible to share data are more likely to pledge such assets as collateral, thereby improving their access to credit. These effects are more pronounced for firms facing greater information asymmetry and those with greater information available to share. These findings highlight the role of open banking in reducing collateral constraints by mitigating information asymmetry.



PUBLICATION

Customer Data Access and Fintech Entry: Early Evidence from Open Banking [NBER] [CEPR] [BoE]
Journal of Financial Economics (2025), 169: 103950 (with Tania Babina, Saleem Bahaj, Greg Buchak, Filippo De
Marco, Angus Foulis, Will Gornall, and Francesco Mazzola)

Abstract: Open banking (OB) empowers bank customers to share transaction data with fintechs and other banks. 49 countries have adopted OB policies. Consumer trust in fintechs predicts OB policy adoption and adoption spurs investment in fintechs. UK microdata shows that OB enables: i) consumers to access both financial advice and credit; ii) SMEs to establish new fintech lending relationships. In a calibrated model, OB universally improves welfare through entry and product improvements when used for advice. When used for credit, OB promotes entry and competition by reducing adverse selection, but higher prices for costlier or privacy-conscious consumers partially offset these benefits.



WORK IN PROGRESS

Banks and Alternative Finance: Evidence from Payday Loan Market

Dissecting the Long-Term Performance of the Initial Coin Offering Market 
(with Franklin Allen and Jae Hyoung Kim)

Artificial Intelligence and Financial Crime 



POLICY PUBLICATION

Financial Lives 2024: Key findings from the FCA’s Financial Lives May 2024 survey [FCA]
Financial Conduct Authority 2025 (with T. Burrell, I. Clark, R. Cross, M. Elliot-Cooke, A. Martin, C. Nichols,
E. Ripley, G. Thomas, M. Watmough, V. Whiting)

Financial Lives 2022: Key findings from the FCA’s Financial Lives May 2022 survey [FCA]
Financial Conduct Authority 2023 (with T. Burrell, I. Clark, R. Cross, M. Elliot-Cooke, J. Hopkins, A. Martin,
C. Nichols, E. Ripley, V. Semenova, G. Thomas, M. Watmough, J. Weir, V. Whiting)



TEACHING

2020 - 2024  Entrepreneurial Finance, MBA Program & MSc Finance Program
                      Teaching Assistant for Ramana Nanda

2020 - 2022  Corporate Finance for Practitioners, MSc Finance Program
                      Teaching Assistant for Rajkamal Iyer

2020 - 2022  Accounting & Corporate Finance, MSc FinTech Program
                      Tutorial Lecturer & Teaching Assistant for Clara Martinez-Toledano   
                      Teaching Evaluations: 4.4/5.0 (2020/21), 4.7/5.0 (2021/22) 

2021 - 2022  Venture Capital & Growth Finance, MSc Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Management Program
                      Teaching Assistant for Miguel Meuleman