We examine the effect of lending banksâ?? board representation (affiliated banker on board, or AFB) on conservative accounting. We argue that private information obtained through board representation enhances the monitoring and the influence of lenders and therefore reduces their demand for conservatism-facilitated debt contracting. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that conservatism measured by the asymmetric timeliness of earnings (Basu, 1994) is markedly lower for AFB firms, even after controlling for a variety of confounding effects. In addition we find: (1) reduction in conservatism is greater for AFB than for relationship banking, highlighting the importance of board representation; (2) no reduction in conservatism when unaffiliated bankers are on board, suggesting the importance of affiliation; and (3) AFB is associated with lower use of covenants and lower sensitivity between conservatism and covenant intensity, suggesting that AFB substitutes for the conventional monitoring through conservatism-facilitated debt contracting.