While enormous attention has been paid to the impacts of bank competition on financial institutions' stability, very little is known about the influence of bank competition on the risk of non-financial firms. Using a large data sample of 26,554 firm-year observations in five ASEAN emerging markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), we find a positive relationship between bank competition and corporate default risk. The result is robust to a battery of robustness tests. Interestingly, bank competition appears to induce non-financial firms to pursue excessive risk-taking activities, which subsequently translates into higher default risk. We do not find empirical evidence supporting the notion that bank competition increases cost of debt in our research context.