The author concludes that total bank lending to companies is less today than it was five years ago. This is based on the following:

For large, financially strong companies, the current interest rates that banks pay to borrow are higher than the interest rates they can receive for loans to these companies.

Banks won’t lend to companies that are not financially strong.

Total lending by banks to small and medium companies is less today than it was five years ago.

Banks

The conclusion is that total lending is down from five years ago. We have a premise establishing that lending from small and medium companies is down from five years ago. But what about the large companies? Isn’t it possible that lending to large, financially strong companies actually increased in a way that offsets the decrease from small and medium companies?

So to make the argument valid, we want to learn that lending to large, financially strong companies has NOT increased enough to outweigh the decrease in lending to small/medium companies. The correct answer might interact with the first premise concerning interest rates for borrowing vs. lending concerning large companies. The role of that premise is not entirely clear right now.