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This study focuses on the banking systems evaluation in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (known as the PIIGS) during the financial and post-financial crisis period from 2009 to 2018.

A conditional robust nonparametric frontier analysis (order-m estimators) is used to measure banking efficiency combined with variables highlighting the effects of Non-Performing Loans. Next, a truncated regression is used to examine if institutional, macroeconomic, and financial variables affect bank performance differently. Unlike earlier studies, we use the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) as an institutional variable that affects banking sector efficiency.

This research shows that the PIIGS crisis affects each bank/country differently due to their various efficiency levels. Most of the study variables — CPI, government debt to GDP ratio, inflation, bank size — significantly affect banking efficiency measures.

The contribution of this article to the relevant banking literature is two-fold. First, it analyses the efficiency of the PIIGS banking system from 2009 to 2018, focusing on NPLs. Second, this is the first empirical study to use probabilistic frontier analysis (order-m estimators) to evaluate PIIGS banking systems.

This study aims to examine the impact and contribution of priority and non-priority sectors, as well as their sub-sectors, on the gross non-performing assets of public, private and foreign sector banks.

The Reserve Bank of India's database on the Indian economy is used to retrieve data over 13 years (2008–2021). Public sector (12), private sector (22) and foreign sector (44) banks are represented in the sample. Two-way ANOVA, multiple regression and panel regression statistical techniques are used in SPSS and EViews to examine the data. Further, the results are also validated by using robustness testing by applying the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) and dynamic least square (DOLS) regression.

The results showed that, for private and foreign banks, the non-priority sector makes up the majority of the total gross non-performing assets, although both the priority and non-priority sectors are substantial for public sector banks. The largest contributors to the total gross non-performing assets in public, private and foreign banks are industries, agriculture and micro and small businesses. The FMOLS displays robustness results that are qualitatively similar to the baseline result.

Based on the study's findings about the patterns of non-performing assets originating from these specific industries, banks might improve the way in which these advanced loans are managed.

There has not been much research done on the subject of sub-sector-specific non-performing assets and how they affect total gross non-performing assets across the three sector banks. The study's primary focus will be on the issue of non-performing assets in the priority’s and non-priority’s sub-sectors, namely, agricultural, micro and small businesses, food credit, industries, services, retail loans and other priority and non-priority sectors.

This paper aims to document the impact of shadow banking on non-performing loans (NPLs) of publicly listed banks in an international setting.

This paper uses the data from 27 countries and various estimation strategies to test the arguments presented in this paper. The sample covers the period between 2002 and 2020.

The empirical results suggest that banks headquartered in countries with high shadow banking activity have fewer NPLs than otherwise similar banks headquartered in countries with low shadow banking activity. The findings remain qualitatively the same in different sub-samples and after replacing the main variables with their alternate proxies. The paper also shows that this relationship is sensitive to bank-specific characteristics. Moreover, the paper also indicates that the stringency of banking regulations weakens the relationship between shadow banking and NPLs.

The study’s data limitations prevent a detailed year-by-year analysis of NPLs and shadow banking, restricting insights into their evolving dynamics. In addition, the focus on country-level shadow banking data limits the exploration of how multinational banks’ activities in various jurisdictions impact individual banks’ NPLs.

The paper not only documents the effect of shadow banking on NPLs but also shows that the relationship between shadow banking and NPLs weakens as banking regulations become more stringent.

Purpose: The study aimed to investigate the impact of corporate governance (CG), non-performing loans (NPLs), and bank size (BS) on the financial performance (FP) of banking institutions in Kosovo.

Need for the study: Despite the growth and development of the banking sector in Kosovo, there’s a dearth of comprehensive research examining the key factors influencing their FP. This study aimed to bridge this gap, with a focus on CG, NPLs, and BS.

Methodology: The research employed a multiple regression model to analyse a sample of banking institutions in Kosovo over the period 2006–2021. The key variables included various CG factors, the level of NPLs, and BS, with FP measured through return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE).

Findings: The study found a significant positive relationship between CG factors and bank performance (BP), particularly board size and board independence. Conversely, a significant negative relationship was observed between the level of NPLs and BP. Furthermore, the study revealed a non-linear relationship between BS and FP, with economies of scale contributing to improved performance up to a certain threshold, after which further increases in size led to inefficiencies and lower performance.

Practical implications: The findings of this study carry important implications for policymakers, banking practitioners, and academics. It underlines the importance of sound CG, effective risk management, and maintaining an optimal BS to enhance the FP of banks in Kosovo. It is suggested that these factors should be considered in the formulation of future banking regulations and strategies.

This study investigates the role of market concentration and efficiency in banking system stability during the COVID-19 pandemic. We empirically test the hypothesis that market concentration and efficiency are significant determinants of bank performance and stability during the time of crises, using a sample of 575 banks in 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

The main sources of bank data are the BankScope and BankFocus (Bureau van Dijk) databases, World Bank development indicators, and official websites of banks in MENA countries. This study combined descriptive and analytical approaches. We utilize a panel dataset and adopt panel data econometric techniques such as fixed/random effects and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator.

The results reveal that market concentration negatively affects bank profitability, whereas improved efficiency further enhances bank performance and contributes to the banking sector’s overall stability. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that during the COVID-19 pandemic, bank stability strongly depended on the level of market concentration, but not on bank efficiency. However, more efficient banks are more profitable and stable if the banking institutions are Islamic. Similarly, Islamic banks with the same level of efficiency demonstrated better overall financial performance during the pandemic than their conventional peers did.

The main limitation is related to the period of COVID-19 pandemic that was covered in this paper (2020–2021). Therefore, further investigation of the COVID-19 effects on bank profitability and risk will require an extended period of the pandemic crisis, including 2022.

This study provides information that will enable bank managers and policymakers in MENA countries to assess the growing impact of market concentration and efficiency on the banking sector stability. It also helps them in formulating suitable strategies to mitigate the adverse consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our recommendations are useful guides for policymakers and regulators in countries where Islamic and conventional banking systems co-exist and compete, based on different business models and risk management practices.

The authors contribute to the banking stability literature by investigating the role of market concentration and efficiency as the main determinants of bank performance and stability during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is the first to analyze banking sector stability in the MENA region, using both individual and risk-adjusted aggregated performance measures.

For close to two decades, the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) has been preparing to launch a second monetary union within the ECOWAS region. This study aims to determine the impact such a unionised monetary regime will have on financial stability as represented by the nonperforming loan ratios of Ghana in a counterfactual framework.

This study models nonperforming loan ratios as dependent on the monetary policy rate and the business cycle. The study then used historical data to estimate the parameters of the nonperforming loan ratio response function using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. The estimated parameters are further used to estimate the impact of several counterfactual unionised monetary policy rates on the nonperforming loan ratios and its volatility of Ghana. As robustness check, the Least Absolute Shrinkage Selection Operator (LASSO) regression is also used to estimate the nonperforming loan ratios response function and to predict nonperforming loans under the counterfactual unionised monetary policy rates.

The results of the counterfactual study reveals that the apparent cost of monetary unification is much less than supposed with a monetary union likely to dampen volatility in non-performing loans in Ghana. As such, the WAMZ members should increase the pace towards monetary unification.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by explicitly modelling nonperforming loan ratios as dependent on monetary policy and the business cycle. The study also settles the debate on the financial stability cost of a monetary union due to the nonalignment of business cycles and economic structures.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused financial stress and limited their lending agility, resulting in more non-performing loans (NPLs) and lower performance during the II wave of the coronavirus crisis. Therefore, it is essential to identify the risky factors influencing the financial performance of Indian banks spanning 2018–2022.

Our sample consists of a balanced panel dataset of 75 scheduled commercial banks from three different ownership groups, including public, private and foreign banks, that were actively engaged in their operations during 2018–2022. Factor identification is performed via a fixed-effects model (FEM) that solves the issue of heterogeneity across different with banks over time. Additionally, to ensure the robustness of our findings, we also identify the risky drivers of the financial performance of Indian banks using an alternative measure, the pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) model.

Empirical evidence indicates that default risk, solvency risk and COVAR reduce financial performance in India. However, high liquidity, Z-score and the COVID-19 crisis enhance the financial performance of Indian banks. Unsystematic risk and systemic risk factors play an important role in determining the prognosis of COVID-19. The study supports the “bad-management,” “moral hazard” and “tail risk spillover of a single bank to the system” hypotheses. Public sector banks (PSBs) have considerable potential to achieve financial performance while controlling unsystematic risk and exogenous shocks relative to their peer group. Finally, robustness check estimates confirm the coefficients of the main model.

This study contributes to the knowledge in the banking literature by identifying risk factors that may affect financial performance during a crisis nexus and providing information about preventive measures. These insights are valuable to bankers, academics, managers and regulators for policy formulation. The findings of this paper provide important insights by considering all the risk factors that may be responsible for reducing the probability of financial performance in the banking system of an emerging market economy.

The empirical analysis has been done with a fresh perspective to consider unsystematic risk, systemic risk and exogenous risk (COVID-19) with the financial performance of Indian banks. Furthermore, none of the existing banking literature explicitly explores the drivers of the I and II waves of COVID-19 while considering COVID-19 as a dependent variable. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to make efforts in this direction.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between employee training and bank risk to verify whether and to what extent an increase in employee training, as a soft component of total quality management (TQM), affects bank risk.

The research adopts a panel regression, based on a unique dataset of a sample of Italian banks over the period 2011–2018, to test whether employee training affects bank risk, measured alternatively in terms of Z-score, a proxy of bank stability and non-performing loans (NPLs)/gross loans ratio as a proxy of credit risk.

Research findings reveal that increasing employee training leads to growing bank stability. In contrast, credit risk is not affected by employee training. However, by investigating training heterogeneity, this study found that the increase in the number of managerial training hours, as a proxy for soft skills training, negatively impacts credit risk. Therefore, an increase in soft skills leads to a reduction in bank credit risk.

This study provides empirical evidence in support of the relationship between employee training and bank risk, which seems novel in the literature. From a managerial point of view, this study highlights the need for banks to pay attention to the skills, particularly soft skills, that banks' employees must possess to effectively manage bank risk and, more specifically, the core bank risk.

Empirical evidence on the relationship between employee training, soft/hard skills and bank risk appears limited if not absent. Therefore, the findings provide insights for a more nuanced interpretation of variables that affect bank risk.

The reason for concern is the rapid decline in loans to small enterprises which is critical to their performance, compared to large businesses following the periods of banking reformations in Nigeria. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of risk perception on bank lending behaviour to small enterprises. It also investigates the impact of government intervention, consolidation and recapitalization on the relationship between risk perception and bank lending behaviour to small enterprise.

This study empirically analysed (ordinary least square) secondary data obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletins, Annual Statement of Accounts covering the period 1992–2020.

The results show that the absence of government interventions and the presence of banking reformations have statistically negative significant effect on bank lending to small enterprises. The findings challenge the argument that generally assumes risk aversion of banks towards small enterprise lending because of small enterprise’s inability to prove their credit worthiness and consequently constraining access to finance to the sector. Instead, the results and analysis from this study found theoretical support for the variation of bank behaviour in lending to small enterprises depending on the status of wealth of the financial system.

A key lesson from this study for government concerned about promoting performance of the small enterprise sector is that regulating and enforcing lending requirements on access to debt financing of the sector is necessary if constraints in access debt finance is to be eliminated. Second, while strategies such as bank consolidation, recapitalization may help strengthen and make financially robust the banking system; it places the banks in a gain position where losses looms to them than gain.

This study challenges the argument that generally assumes risk aversion of banks towards small enterprise lending as a result of inability to prove their credit worthiness and consequently constraining access to finance to the sector. Instead, the results and analysis from this study reveal a variation in lending to small enterprises and suggests that the position of the bank in relation to a reference point influences how risk is perceived by the bank and thus impacts on their risk decision-making behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to engage in a systematic examination of previous scholarship on the relationship between Sharia governance (SG), which is represented by the Sharia Supervisory Board (SSB), and the Internal Sharia Review (ISR), to determine whether the ISR can minimize financing risk in Islamic banking.

The literature search consisted of two steps: a randomized and systematic literature review. The methodology adopted in this article is a systematic literature review.

To reduce the risk of financing in Islamic banking, SG must be implemented optimally by making rules regarding the role of the SSB in supervising customer financing. In addition, it is a necessary to establish an entity that assists the SSB in the implementation of SG, namely, the ISR section, but there is still very little research on the role of the SSB and ISR in minimizing financing risk.

Establishing an ISR to assist the SSB in carrying out its duties has direct practical implications for Islamic banking: minimizing financing risks and compliance with Islamic Sharia principles. In addition, new rules regarding the role of SSBs and the ISR in reducing credit risk include monitoring customers to ensure that they fulfill their financing commitments on time. This new form of regulation and review can be used as a reference by the Otoritas Jasa Keuangan or Finance Service Authority to create new policies or regulations regarding SG, especially in Indonesia.

Subsequent research may introduce other more relevant variables, such as empirically testing the competence, independence or integrity of SSB and the ISR team as it attempts to minimize the risk of financing in Islamic banks. In addition, further research is expected to examine whether the SSB or the ISR team has a positive or negative influence on the risk of financing Islamic banks with secondary data.