A Psychological Approach to Credit Risk Management: A Qualitative Dyadic Survey of Moroccan SMEs

The banking environment has become both unstable and vulnerable due to various fluctuations in the monetary sphere. Faced with these various disruptions, banks are increasingly threatened by risks affecting their activity and position on the financial market, notably credit risk. Risk management is the best defense shield for ensuring a healthy financial equilibrium in the long term. Nevertheless, it remains an advanced practice, which Moroccan banks are unable to support, due to the lack of human and financial resources. This article intends to highlight the importance of customer and banker behavior in the credit granting process. It analyses the customer's profile, which can have an impact on the credit granting decision, using differential psychology and in particular the theory of personality traits -BIG5-, and the banker's behavior, using the theory of judgement and decision-making - JDM-.