Experimental Design
The study is conducted in multiple rounds.
We will be working with potential and actual SME and microentrepreneur clients of a Colombian bank. To date, we have conducted three rounds of intervention, in efforts to increase the study sample.
First round of intervention (May 17-August 13, 2021):
Firms are divided in the following four eligible groups, with 1,004 firms total:
i. Type 1: Clients from a previous credit campaign that received loans but may need loans again now.
ii. Type 2: Clients from a previous credit campaign who were not interested in loans then but may need loans now.
iii. Type 3: Firms which are at the credit score margin and thus were not considered for contact in any previous credit campaign.
iv. Type 4: Firms that are above the credit score margin, but have not been contacted in any previous credit campaign.
These firm types are used as a stratification variable in the randomization procedure. To avoid sparse strata, we merge together Group 2 and Group 4, thus leaving us with 3 strata for this variable.
We also stratify by the number of months where clients made at least one deposit in 2020 (12 strata). Clients that did not make at least one deposit in 2020 were excluded from the experiment.
There are 59 SMEs that made their first deposits in 2021. For these clients, we only stratify by the firm type, as we have no available transaction data to randomize in a similar fashion to firms who were clients since 2020 or earlier.
Second round of intervention (September 13-November 30, 2021):
To increase the sample of the first round of intervention, we have added an additional 2,424 SME firms to the experiment. These firms made at least one deposit between January and August 2020 (no updated data was available before the second intervention round launched). These firms were stratified into the client type as defined above:
i. Type 1: Clients from a previous credit campaign that received loans but may need loans again now.
ii. Type 2: Clients from a previous credit campaign who were not interested in loans then but may need loans now.
iii. Type 3: Firms which are at the credit score margin and thus were not considered for contact in any previous credit campaign.
iv. Type 4: Firms that are above the credit score margin, but have not been contacted in any previous credit campaign.
As in the case of the first intervention round, we merge together Group 2 and Group 4, thus leaving us with 3 strata for this variable. Since the transaction data was incomplete for this new additional SME sample, we only stratified on firm type.
Third round of intervention (October 8- November 1, 2021)
An additional round of intervention was prepared using a sample of self-employed microentrepreneurs from the bank's database. A sample of 24,290 eligible clients was selected, based on whether they had made at least one deposit transaction from January 2020 to August 2021. This sample was assigned 50% to treatment, and 50% to control. These clients were stratified based on their typing, which varies slightly from the SME case:
i. Type 1: Clients from a previous credit campaign that received loans but may need loans again now.
ii. Type 2: Clients from a previous credit campaign who were not interested in loans then but may need loans now.
iii. Type 3: Clients previously not contacted for loans applications due to credit risk concerns, and now due to flexibilization from the government policy on who qualifies for loans they may be contacted in the new campaign.
For the firms that are randomized into the treatment group, these will be offered the credit product by the bank via phone call, at which point they can express interest in receiving the loan. After a bank evaluation, these loans are approved and disbursed to the client. We will then receive administrative bank data for these clients to evaluate the outcomes of interest in the short and medium term.