Usefulness of the cash flow statement for Bahraini banks' lending decisions

Accounting and commercial lending studies indicate the importance of the cash flow statement and its information and techniques to account users for better decision making. Till the date of writing no attempts have been made to provide data on the actual use of cash flow information or techniques in lending decisions. This study aims to investigate empirically the impact of understanding, using, and analysing the borrower's cash flow statement on the commercial lending decision and exploring the "cashflowability" information and techniques used by lenders to assess the creditworthiness of the borrowers in order to improve the lending analysis and smooth the lending decision. Thus, we expect that when presented with empirical tasks conducted in the Kingdom of Bahrain and designed to measure the influence of cashflowability on lenders' assessments of credit-worthiness, the lenders would use a cash flow statement and its information and techniques as a relevant signal.