Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 13th May 2024, 10:54:32pm EDT

 
 
Session Overview
Session
Track W6-6: Loan Markets: Market Failures and Government Intervention
Time:
Wednesday, 22/May/2024:
2:45pm - 3:30pm

Session Chair: Olivia Kim, Harvard Business School
Discussant: David H Zhang, Rice University
Location: Room 548


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Presentations

Integrated Intermediation and Fintech Market Power

Greg Buchak1, Vera Chau2, Adam Jorring3

1Stanford University; 2Swiss Finance Institute & Geneva Finance Research Institute; 3Boston College

We document that in the US residential mortgage market, the share of integrated intermediaries acting as both originator and servicer has declined dramatically. Exploiting a regulatory change, we show that borrowers with integrated servicers are more likely to refinance, and conditional on refinance, are more likely to be recaptured by their own servicer. Recaptured borrowers pay lower fees relative to other refinancers. This trend is partially offset by a rise in integrated fintech originator-servicers, who recapture at higher frequency but at worse terms. We build and calibrate a dynamic structural model to interpret these facts and quantify their impact on equilibrium outcomes. Our model suggests that integreated intermediaries enjoy a marginal cost advantage when refinancing recaptured borrowers, and fully disintegrating them would reduce refinancing frequencies and increase fees. Fintechs use technology to reacquire customers and reduce borrower inertia against refinancing. This endogenously creates market power, which fintechs exploit through higher fees. Despite worse terms ex-post, fintechs increase consumer welfare ex-ante by increasing refinancing frequencies. Taken together, our results highlight the importance of intermediaries' scope in consumer financial outcomes and highlight a novel, quantitatively important application of fintech: customer acquisition.


Buchak-Integrated Intermediation and Fintech Market Power-1642.pdf


 
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