摘要：In the last two decades a growing number of banks have started to implement cross-selling programs across their branch network in an effort to become sales-driven organizations. What are the consequences of cross-selling on the traditional role of banks as producers of imperfect information about borrowers? The authors show that the answer to this question crucially depends on the ability of banks to exploit synergies between the screening and the cross-selling activities. The paper proposes a tentative classification of services according to their degree of customer-specificity and information-intensity. On the one hand,information about the services bought by a customer,such as insurance or payment services,may lower banks’ total and marginal screening costs. On the other hand,information collected about a potential borrower may be used to increase the probability of selling to her services other than loans. The authors show that the exploitation of these synergies is essential if banks want to prevent the negative impact of cross-selling on banks’ optimal screening effort.
