Theories of financial intermediation predict that bank loans should not be marketable because of moral hazard problems; banks will not conduct credit risk analysis or monitor borrowers if they are not at risk for failing to perform these services. Throughout most of history, bank loans have not, in fact, been marketable.

To explain the opening of this loan sales market, we present a model of incentive-compatible loan sales that allows for implicit contractual features between loan sellers and loan buyers. We then test for the presence of these features using a sample of over 800 recent loan sales.