We investigate and compare the cognitive thinking of two key actors involved in the
corporate lending process: business-side credit officers and risk analysts. We investigated
four different heuristics – risk aversion, overconfidence, overoptimism and representativeness
bias – through a questionnaire survey based on a previous experiment by psychologists.
The eight banks included in the study are among the 12 largest banks in Hungary in
terms of balance sheet total, and they are also active in the financing of the large
corporate segment. The respondents are relationship managers and risk analysts working
in the large corporate segment. The research is exploratory and comparative and uses
qualitative research methods. Based on this research, we confirmed in a banking context
that the decisions of relationship managers and risk analysts are characterised by
cognitive biases. One of the limitations of the research is that the decision-making
process was examined in fictitious situations rather than through a real credit assessment
process. The research is novel because cognitive biases have not been studied in a
bank lending context specifically for credit officers and risk analysts. The results
are useful for optimising decision-making processes in banks.