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This study aims to examine the role of financial inclusion and institutional factors such as corruption and the rule of law (RL) on the credit risk and stability of banks.

The study considers a sample of 61 developing countries and uses very robust estimation techniques that allow controlling for endogeneity, heteroskedasticity and serial correlation, such as instrumental variables method in two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS), instrumental variables generalized method of moments (IV-GMM), as well as system of generalized methods of moments in two stages (Sys-2GMM).

The results confirm that financial inclusion and strengthening the RL can significantly contribute to reducing credit risk and improving the financial stability of banks; in contrast, the authors find that weak control of corruption aggravates credit risk. In addition, they found that greater competitiveness in the banking sector increases credit risk.

This study supports the need to promote financial inclusion and strengthen institutional factors to improve the stability of the banking sector, as well as promote general well-being in the economy.

This study contributes to the scarce literature by simultaneously using institutional factors such as corruption and the RL and macroeconomic variables such as economic growth and inflation in the relationship between financial inclusion and the banking sector, as well as considering competitiveness as an explanatory factor for banks’ credit risk and stability.

Introduction: Commercial banks play a vital role in the global economy, facilitating economic growth and providing essential financial services. As key intermediaries between savers and borrowers, these institutions operate in a dynamic and complex environment characterised by various risk factors that can significantly impact their profitability and overall stability. Understanding the interconnected relationships between credit risk, interest rate risk, liquidity risk, and profitability is crucial for effective risk management strategies and the development of appropriate regulatory frameworks.

Purpose: Commercial banks play a critical role in the global economy by facilitating economic growth and providing financial services. This study examines the interconnected relationships between credit risk, interest rate risk, liquidity risk, and profitability in commercial banking.

Methodology: The sample consists of licenced scheduled commercial banks on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) from 2015 to 2022. Using the Smart PLS-SEM 3.0 path analysis technique, the study evaluates the combined influence of these risk factors on profitability and provides evidence-based recommendations for risk management strategies.

Findings: The findings can assist banks in enhancing their risk management practices, and regulators in developing appropriate regulatory frameworks. By understanding the key risk factors and their impact on profitability, banks and regulators can mitigate risks, enhance transparency, and promote stability within the banking sector.

Significance/value: The value of this study lies in its focus on the interconnectedness of risk factors, profitability, and the potential implications for decision-making, risk management strategies, regulatory frameworks, and the overall stability of the commercial banking sector.

This paper aims to assess the impact of credit risk on the market values of private banks during the corona pandemic.

This study is identifying critical issues of credit risk at six great private banks. A conceptual framework is designed based on the Tobin Q model for investigating study hypotheses. Quantitative financial analysis methods have been used for processing data, such as financial ratios, arithmetic mean and multiple linear regression.

The most important result of this study is the lack of influence of credit risk on the market value of selected banks. Because the dimensions of credit risk have critical importance in increasing or decreasing the market value, these banks must continue to adopt quantitative financial analysis to measure credit risks to avoid their risk.

This study elaborates the need for financial indicators to help assess the market value of banks during the economic crises caused by the closure of commercial institutions during the corona pandemic. There is continued increase in bank credit to support these institutions, borrowers and cash withdrawals, which may affect their market reputation.

This study investigates the relationship between credit booms and bank risk in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, with credit information sharing acting as a moderator.

The authors use a two-step System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) estimator on a sample of 79 listed banks in 5 developing ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam in the period 2006–2019. In addition, the authors perform robustness tests with different proxies for credit booms and bank risk. The data are collected on an annual basis.

Bank risk is positively related to credit booms and is negatively associated with credit information sharing. Further, credit information sharing reduces the detrimental effect of credit booms on bank stability. The authors find that both public credit registries and private credit bureaus are effective in enhancing bank stability in ASEAN countries. These results are robust to regression models with alternative proxies for credit booms and bank risk.

Banks in ASEAN countries tend to have strong lending growth to support the economy, but this could be detrimental to stability of the sector. Credit information sharing schemes should be encouraged because these schemes might enable growth of credit without compromising bank stability. Therefore, policymakers could promote private credit bureaus (PCB) and public credit registries (PCR) to realize their benefits. The authors' research focuses on developing ASEAN countries, but future research could provide more evidence by expanding this study to other emerging economies. In-depth interviews and surveys with bankers and regulatory bodies about these concerns could provide additional insights in the future.

The study is the first to examine the role of PCB and PCR in alleviating the negative impact of credit booms on bank risk. Furthermore, the authors use both accounting-based and market-based risk measures to provide a fuller view of the impact. Finally, there is little evidence on the link between credit booms, credit information sharing and bank risk in ASEAN, so the authors aim to fill this gap.

Providing loans, particularly to small-scale farmers, is one of the roles of formal financial institutions. Lending to small farmers is risky. An institution's health is closely related to the institution's ability to manage credit and portfolio risk. Expanding smallholder farmers' access to finance while maintaining a sustainable financial system is essential; however, pandemics present additional challenges. Accordingly, as reported in the literature, the pandemic's high loan default rates and decreases in return on assets (ROAs) call for further credit risk management research. There have been limited studies on credit risk management during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), so this article aims to provide useful information on its influences.

Researchers used data from formal financial institutions in 2018 (before COVID-19) and in 2021 (during COVID-19) to accomplish the study's broad objective. Descriptive and inferential statistics were the main analytical tools. The credit risk management indicators were categorized into collateral management, loan management, loan recovery management, governance and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Weights were assigned to each category based on the importance to credit risk management. A binary logit model was employed in assessing the factors influencing credit risk management as proxied to loan repayment, while Ordinary Least Square (OLS) was used to examine factors that influence ROAs.

One of the most noteworthy findings is that credit risk management is affected by different factors and magnitudes before and during the COVID-19 era. Loan recovery and ICT management indicators were most influential during the pandemic. In addition, the study noted that low agricultural productivity during the pandemic contributed to an additional challenge in loan default rates because of various COVID-19-containing measures. Additionally, there was a lack of governance and ICT management capacity to drive credit and portfolio risk management during the epidemic.

The paper presents new empirical findings on credit risk management during the COVID-19 era. The study used a methodology which has not been used previously in credit risk management in Nigerian financial institutions. Therefore, this research could become the cornerstone of further academic research in other developing countries using this methodology.

Using bank-level data over the 1994–2015 period, the authors aim to investigate the role of bank-specific factors on credit risk in Italy by considering two different groups of banks, namely, cooperative and non-cooperative (commercial and popular), in different local markets.

Relying on highly territorially disaggregated data at labour market areas’ level, the authors estimate the impact of the role of bank-specific factors on credit risk in Italy from the estimation of a fixed-effect estimator. Non-performing loans to total loans has been used as a proxy of credit risk; the bank-specific factors are as follows: growth of loans, reflecting credit policy; log of total assets, controlling for banks’ size; loans to total assets, reflecting the volume of credit market; equity to total assets, capturing the solvency of banks and reflecting their capital strength; return on assets, reflecting the profitability of banks; deposits to loans, reflecting the intermediation cost; cost of total assets, reflecting the banks’ efficiency or volume of intermediation cost.

The empirical findings suggest that regulatory credit policy, capitalisation, volume of credit and volume of intermediation costs are the main bank-specific factors affecting non-performing loans. Nevertheless, the present analysis suggests that the behaviour of cooperative banks’ behaviour seems to be in line with that of commercial rather than popular banks, casting doubts about the feasibility of their credit policies. It turns out that recent reforms involving popular and cooperative banks represent the first step toward the enhancement of the stability and efficiency of the Italian banking system. While the present study’s benchmark results are not particularly affected by the degree of competition in the banking sector and by banks’ size, it shows that both cooperative and non-cooperative banks have undertaken more prudent credit policies after the advent of the financial crisis and the introduction of the Basel regulation.

The relationship between bank-specific factors and credit risk has been analysed using a rich sample of cooperative, commercial and popular banks in Italy over the 1994–2015 period. The authors rely on labour market areas being sub-regional geographical areas where the bulk of the labour force lives and works. The contribution is motivated by the financial distress experienced after the 2008 financial crisis, which has significantly hit the Italian banking system and cooperative banks in particular.

This study explores the effect of income diversification strategy on credit risk and market risk of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Ghana as an emerging market.

The study is based on quarterly data of averagely 271 MFIs that have operated from 2016 to 2018. The dataset is unbalanced and pooled cross-sectional with 3,259 data points. The study measures the diversification strategy using income diversification indices, and accounting ratios to measure the other variables. We utilised the weighted least squares (WLS) approach to explore the nexus.

The findings show that income diversification is associated with better loan quality and credit risk management. Market risk increases with the level of income diversification of microfinance firms. It is evident that large MFIs can manage their credit risks well and can have a low default rate, depicting an overall U-shaped nexus. On the other hand, the effect of size on market risk is an inverted U-shaped. The effect of asset tangibility on credit risk is positively significant while the effect on market risk is negatively significant. High profitability enhances credit risk management leading to lower loan losses while in the case of diversified and profitable MFIs, they tend to invest more in government securities. The results suggest that MFIs that hold more cash and cash equivalents tend to have high loan loss provision and more government securities suggesting much attention should be paid to optimal cash management.

The results throw light on the credit risk and market risk profile of the firms and the effect of diversification strategies on them. The findings are relevant for effective macroprudential regulation, market regulation and prudential regulation of the microfinance sector.

The findings reveal the nature of income diversification strategy of MFIs in emerging markets such as Ghana, pointing out how they affect the risk exposure of MFIs that lend to the pro-poor population.

This is a premier formal assessment of the nexus between income diversification strategies and risk management among MFIs that serve the pro-poor population in the emerging market context.

The credit crunch of 2008 and recent COVID-19 influences underscored the importance of liquidity and credit risk management in businesses and financial institutions. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of liquidity risk and credit risk management on accounting and market performances of banks operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

This study uses a panel data regression analysis on a sample of 51 listed commercial banks operating in 10 MENA countries during the period 2010–2018.

The results show that credit risk management does not affect the accounting performance of banks, while it has a non-linear, convex relationship with market performance. Surprisingly, liquidity risk management is not a significant driver for either performance measure in studied banks. However, when a bank combines credit risk management with liquidity risk management efforts, liquidity risk management actions return significant results on both performances, illustrated by an inverted U-shaped relationship. In addition, this study examines the joint impact of both risks on bank performance. This study reveals that accounting and market performances are differently affected by joint risk management efforts. Their impact depends on the combination of risk management ratios upon which banks choose to focus their efforts.

The findings help bankers and regulators further consider non-linearities and offer them new tools for managing the impact of credit and liquidity risk interactions towards achieving more financial stability.

These results contribute to traditional banking in offering bankers and regulators new tools for managing the impact of credit and liquidity risk interactions on bank performance.

Based on a sample of 1,872 firm-year observations for 573 global firms over the period 2013–2016, this study aims to provide empirical evidence on how environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance affects corporate creditworthiness as measured by credit default swap (CDS) spreads.

The authors use a regression model that accounts for country, industry and time-fixed effects as well as the instrumental-based Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach to dynamic panel modeling.

This study finds that improvements in ESG performance, especially in its governance pillar, reduce credit risk. Further, the authors uncover evidence suggesting the complementarity between ESG performance and country-level sustainability. The results indicate a stronger risk-mitigating impact of ESG performance in countries with higher sustainability scores.

In terms of practical implications, the findings suggest that corporations should strengthen governance frameworks and procedures to reduce credit risk, prior to embarking on environmental and social objectives. Further, the finding that country sustainability is an important determinant of CDS spreads suggests that country-level sustainability initiatives would not only help to preserve natural capital and promote social capital but also be beneficial to businesses and financial stability.

The study adds to the literature on the effects of ESG performance on credit risk by (1) utilizing a measure of ESG performance that considers the financial materiality of ESG issues across different industries; (2) utilizing a market-based measure of credit risk and CDS spreads; (3) examining the relative importance of ESG components to credit risk, rather than just the aggregate measure; and (4) assessing the influence of country sustainability on the relationship between ESG and credit risk.

This paper aims to investigate whether loan officers' risk taking in credit decisions are associated with their personal financial risk preference and personality traits or solely with bank-contextual and loan-relevant factors.

An online survey administered in six large Swedish banks to 163 loan officers responsible for assessing credit risk and approval of loan applications. The loan officers rated their likelihood of approving fictitious loan applications from business companies.

The loan officers' credit risk taking is associated with bank-contextual factors, directly with perceived organizational credit risk norms and indirectly with self-confidence in assessing credit risks through attitude to credit risk taking. A direct association is also found with personal financial risk preference but not with personality traits.

Increased awareness of that loan officers' personal financial risk preference is associated with their credit risk taking in loan decisions but that the banks' risk policy has a stronger association. Banks' managements and boards should therefore assure that their credit risk policy is implemented, followed and being aligned with their performance incentives.

Increased awareness of that loan officers' credit risk taking is associated with personal financial risk preference but more strongly with the banks' risk policy that motivate banks' managements and boards to assure that their credit risk policy is implemented, followed and being aligned with their performance incentives.

The first study which directly compare the associations of loan officers' risk taking in credit approvals with personal risk preference and personality traits versus bank-contextual factors and loan-relevant information.