During the financial crisis, a number of lending relationships have been severed as individual banks sought to reduce loan portfolios, or concentrations within those portfolios, or as banks failed or merged.
Established banking relationships are particularly important to small businesses, who generally do not have access to the broader capital markets and for whom credit extension is often based on private information acquired through repeated interactions over time. When existing lending relationships are broken, time may be required for other banks to establish and build such relationships, allowing lending to resume.