One of the main problems of SMEs is how to finance their investments. The role of banks in this regard is crucial, since they can be a type of sources of financing through lending credits directly to SMEs. The key role of the paper thus relies on analyzing the effect of SMEs financing by the Iranian banking system. The objective of this paper is to determine the influence of loans demanded by the SMEs on finance performance of the various Iranian banks. In addition, it studies the role of other important characters related to lending, bank efficiency, and economic performance in finance to SMEs through the banking system. It is motivated by the hypothesis that macroeconomic-cyclical indicators and bank-specific variables influence the nonperforming loans in the banking system. This is carried out by an application to a logit model. Our findings indicate that several variables have significant effects on nonperforming loans in the Iranian banking system . Return of asset, equity return, SME loan to total loan ratio, inflation, current asset to current liabilities ratio, total SMEs loans to total liabilities ratio and total SMEs loans to total assets ratio have the pronounced significant impacts on nonperforming loans of the Iranian banking . The coefficient of loans to SMEs is significantly positive, which implies that a loan to SMEs increases nonperforming loans method while raising risks to the banking system. JEL Classification: C35, D22, E51
