After an audit, a lender may require the borrower to post more collateral, adjust the agreed-upon borrowing base, or decide not to renew the loan.

To be sure, banks have their own problems. Federal bank examiners have stepped up their scrutiny of financial institutions in recent months, paying close attention to lenders' risk-assessment policies. After all, "the crisis has exposed the inadequacy of the risk-management systems of many financial institutions," said Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke in a recent speech. Businesses feeling the brunt of this heightened scrutiny in the form of denied loans or higher lending fees have said the examiners have been too aggressive.

For their part, regulators argue that they've encouraged prudential lending for worthy borrowers. Moreover, collateral exams are "a longstanding credit practice," noted Martin Gruenberg, vice chairman at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, during a recent House Financial Services Committee hearing. "In cases where market values of collateral have significantly deteriorated and the borrower also is seeking a modification of loan terms, we have encouraged banks to work with the borrower during this difficult period," he said.

In any case, regulators may not be the only ones be triggering changes in how banks deal with their borrowers. Some companies are in dire straits and surely warrant a lender's close watch. A lender may boost its monitoring if a borrower's main customer — one of the Big Three automakers, for instance — is having serious trouble, says John Kaye, a partner at Sisterson & Co., a regional financial consultancy in Pennsylvania.

Kaye says his firm began receiving a higher number of calls about collateral audits over the past six to nine months. Asking the firm to look at companies that previously weren't inspected, Sisterson's lending clients have a "heightened level of concern as the economy has slid," he adds. 

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