The Impact of Bank Fintech on Corporate Short-Term Debt for Long-Term Use—Based on the Perspective of Financial Risk

Information asymmetry between banks and enterprises in the credit market is essentially the microfoundation of financial risk generation. The frequent occurrence of corporate debt defaults, mainly due to the behavior of short-term debt for long-term use (hereinafter referred to as “SDLU”), further aggravates the contagion path from individual liquidity crisis to systemic repayment crisis. In order to test whether bank financial technology (hereinafter referred to as “BankFintech”) can mitigate SDLU and reduce the possibility of financial risks, this study matched the loan data of China’s A-share listed companies with the patent data of bank-invented Fintech from 2013 to 2022 to construct the BankFintech Development Index for empirical analysis. The empirical results show that the development of BankFintech can significantly inhibit SDLU. The mechanism test reveals that BankFintech reduces bank credit risk and liquidity risk by lowering firms’ risk-weighted assets, improving capital adequacy and liquidity ratios, tilts banks’ lending preferences toward duration-matched long-term financing, and “forces” enterprises to take the initiative to improve their financial health and information transparency, enhance their ability to obtain long-term loans, and realize the active management of mismatch risk. Heterogeneity analysis finds that the effect is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises and technology-intensive industries. Further analysis shows that the level of enterprise digitization, the intensity of financial regulation, and related financial policies significantly moderate the marginal effect between the two. This study verified the “Porter’s Risk Mitigation Hypothesis” of Fintech, providing empirical evidence for effectively cracking the financial vulnerability caused by debt maturity mismatch and deepening financial supply-side reform.