The Use of System Dynamics Models to evaluate the Credit Worthiness of firms

Evaluating new bank loans has been considered as one of the main dilemmas that banks managers have to deal with in order to reduce the probability of default. The lending process is a series of activities involving two main parties whose association ranges from the loan application to the successful or unsuccessful repayment of the loan. This paper describes the construction of a flight simulator which uses the ideas of System Dynamics and the Viable Systems Methodology. The Decision Support Tool thus formed uses systemic approaches to measure a firm’s performance and can provide a risk assessment in the sense of evaluating performance under different (whatif) scenarios. The credit worthiness from this model can then be evaluated against the usual estimate based only on financial ratios.