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This paper aims to empirically investigate the impact of bank market concentration of financial constraints on firm investment.

This analysis is based on cross-industries panel of 368 listed Pakistani non-financial firms over the period of 2001-2009. Further, the Generalized Method of Moments estimation technique has been used to estimate the dynamic panel data model.

By applying a dynamic panel analysis, it was found that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are financially constrained in the credit market. The main finding indicates that reduction in bank concentration eases financing constraints, and this effect is more pronounced for SMEs. In addition, while testing the firm opacity in this context, results reveal that opaque firms are more financially constrained, and bank market competition is less favourable to the firms with greater opacity.

The results, first, assess the efficacy of ongoing financial reforms in Pakistan and, second, offer implications for other economies that exhibit financial development similar to that of Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of structural social capital, relational social capital and cognitive social on relationship satisfaction, and also to investigate how relationship satisfaction is associated with negative word-of-mouth and re-patronage intentions, in service recovery.

A sample of 478 Pakistani banking industry clients, who registered a complaint to their bank recently, answered the survey. Variance-based partial least squares structural equation modeling was employed for data analysis.

Results demonstrate that all three facets of social capital have a significant positive impact on relationship satisfaction. However, relationship satisfaction enhances customer re-patronage intentions and restrains negative word-of-mouth intentions.

Findings are important for service firms, particularly for banks to adjust their service recovery strategies.

The paper verified the influence of structural social capital, cognitive social capital and relational social capital on relationship satisfaction and tested the influence of relationship satisfaction on negative word-of-mouth and re-patronage intentions.

The banking industry has always been vulnerable to cyberattacks. In recent years, Pakistan’s banking sector experienced the most intense cyberattack in its over 70-year history. Due to these attacks, a large number of debit card accounts of major banks were negotiated. This study aims to examine the impact of cyberattack awareness and customers’ commitment levels after these cyberattacks.

The study integrated the commitment–trust theory framework for the relationship of trust and commitment to the usage of online banking services. The partial least square structural equation modeling is being used to explore the relationship between customer’s trust, which is an outcome of continuous usage, and customer perception of affirmative cybersecurity measures the bank.

The findings revealed that customer trust in online banking is positively associated with customer commitment, but customers’ cyberattack awareness negatively impacts customer trust and commitment to online banking.

The study highlights the importance of proactive communication, transparency and robust incident response that helps organizations establish themselves as trustworthy entities while prioritizing customer information and transaction protection.

The authors report on how cyberattacks on the banking sector influence the trust and commitment of the customers in the sector. The variable of cyberattack awareness used in this study is novel in online banking literature.

The aim of this study is to understand how board structure, size of audit committee (AC), gender diversity and ownership structure influence banks’ performance in Pakistan. This study also aims to examine how various dimensions of governance differently affect the different measures of bank performance.

This study used panel estimation techniques to quantify the impact of various elements of corporate governance on bank performance by taking annual data of 19 Pakistani banks for the period 2013–2020. The corporate governance is measured by board size, CEO duality, AC size, ownership structure and gender diversity. To get the robust results, this study measures bank performance by considering different indicators, namely, return on assets, earning per share, technical efficiency (TE) and total factor productivity. The empirical investigation is based on several well-known and well-accepted governance theories such as the agency theory, the stewardship theory, the tokenism/critical mass theory and the information asymmetry theory.

The findings of the study reveal that the size of board and ACs both significantly improve profitability and productivity, whereas they decrease TE. Further, the findings suggest that most of the indicators of gender diversity significantly deteriorate the performance of banks. However, ownership structure significantly improves banks’ earnings per share and TE. This study further illustrates that CEO’s duality does not have any significant impact on bank performance. This finding holds true for all the performance measures considered for this study.

The findings are of great importance to various stakeholders, especially to policymakers to know about the factors influencing different measures of performance. Specifically, based on these findings, they can devise the result-oriented strategies to enhance the financial and real performance of banks. The findings also suggest that both investors and owners should take into consideration the governance indicators while evaluating banks’ performance by using accounting, market-based, efficiency and productivity measures.

This research adds to the vast body of existing knowledge about the effectiveness of corporate governance by investigating how the different dimensions of corporate governance and gender diversity influence bank performance in a developing country, namely, Pakistan. Further, this study elaborates the domestic rules/regulations, governance theories and governance framework and practices and tries to link the empirical findings with them for better understanding the role of governance in determining the performance of the banking sector of Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the service quality and its relationship to customer satisfaction among the customers of conventional banks and Islamic banks. A modified SERVQUAL scale is utilized to ascertain the functional dimensions of service quality specific to the industry and service context under study. In addition, the study examines the differences in service quality satisfaction and its impact on the behavioral intentions of customers.

A field survey carried out with the help of a questionnaire constructed by using a modified SERVQUAL scale. Data were collected from 200 walk‐in customers conveniently drawn from three major conventional banks and three Islamic banks located in urban areas of Pakistan. Data were analyzed using the analytical hierarchy process to identify service quality and customer satisfaction‐related factors for Islamic and conventional banks.

By using factor analysis, 52 measurement items with a factor loading greater than (0.5) were identified to form five service quality dimensions namely empathy, service architecture, convenience service encounter, employee service criteria, customer focus and five customer satisfaction dimensions: responsiveness, competency, safe transaction, competitive services, knowledge for the overall banking industry explained 56 percent of the variance. Results from regression analysis of the relationship between multidimensional service quality dimensions and unidimensional customer satisfaction factors also validated the importance of service quality aspects for behavioral intentions (satisfaction, feelings) for customers from conventional banks and Islamic banks.

This study has practical significance for conventional and Islamic banking policy makers for understanding the behavioral intentions of their customers and using them for effectively positioning the service quality of their banks.

This research aims to examine the impact of money laundering (ML) and corruption on the asset quality of conventional and Islamic banks.

The current study used the data of conventional and Islamic banks of Pakistan from 2012 to 2018. In this study, we used fully modified ordinary least squares, dynamic ordinary least squares and pooled ordinary least square methods to analyze the data.

The results found that corruption and ML positively affect the conventional banking non-performing loans (NPLs). In contrast, corruption and ML harm the Islamic bank’s loan portfolio quality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the relationship between corruption, ML and NPLs in conventional and Islamic banks of Pakistan are examined for the first time.

According to the study’s findings, bank authorities should establish an effective method for monitoring loan activities and developing new and innovative products in Islamic banks. Additionally, the Pakistani government needs to improve anti-corruption and anti-ML policies to earn investors’ trust.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the most important factors that affect the capital structure of commercial banks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This study uses annual data of 11 Saudi commercial, national banks listed on the tadawul Saudi stock exchange for the period 2010–2017. Data was collected from the banks financial statements, tadawul annual publications and Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority. By constructing a balanced panel, this study uses pooled ordinary least squares regression along with fixed effects and random effects to examine the relationship between the bank’s book leverage as the dependent variable and bank-specific explanatory variables that include profitability, tangibility, earnings volatility, growth opportunities and bank size, while controlling for macroeconomic conditions.

The findings of this study suggest that banks in Saudi Arabia are highly leveraged, endorsing the fact that the nature of banks’ business is different from non-banking firms. Earnings volatility, growth and bank size show positive and significant relations with book leverage. Profitability and tangibility are negatively related to the book leverage. Empirically, the explanatory variables profitability, earnings volatility, tangibility, growth and bank size have material effects on the capital structure decisions of Saudi commercial banks. In summary, the determinants of capital structure for Saudi banks are the same as those of non-financial firms but are distinctive in nature.

An extensive study on all the banks operating in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries is suggested.

The findings have practical implications for bank managers, which will help them to identify the bank-specific factors affecting the capital structure and choose the values enhancing optimal capital structure. The results of this study can assist regulatory agencies to formulate an effective regulatory framework. Moreover, the findings lay a foundation for the development of financial sector under the umbrella of the Vision 2030 program in the Kingdom.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the factors affecting the capital structure choices of commercial banks operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the findings of the study would prove useful in detailed studies of capital structure in the GCC countries as well.

The purpose of this paper is to determine barriers jeopardizing the adoption and usage intention of mobile banking (M-banking) in Pakistan and provide deeper insights to fix such deteriorating factors.

Data was collected in countrywide regional headquarters to mark the utmost generalizability of the results, which included seven largest cities of Pakistan. SEM path analysis was used to analyze data collected from Pakistan’s top 5 bank customers incorporating both users and non-users.

Results revealed that lack of awareness, initial trust and compatibility and perceived risk were the core barriers that stood out as obstacles to the adoption and usage of M-banking in Pakistan. It was also approved that having fixed these core barriers would outcome in existing users’ continuity intent besides raising new users’ inclination toward M-banking.

The study has unveiled the core barriers that have so far impeded the adoption and usage of M-banking. There is not a unified position concerning adoption and usage blockades. Factors differ with contexts, markets, time and kinds of innovations. However, this study is unlike past studies that merely studied students within a specified institute in a restricted jurisdiction. This is the first study to have nationally explored adoption and usage issues; thus, it is anticipated to potentially contribute to the prevailing literature especially in Pakistani context where a few studies prevail, addressing M-banking adoption and usage barriers.

Sustainability is essential to the ongoing operations of banks, though it is much less clear how Islamic corporate governance (ICG) promotes economic sustainability (ES) and thereby prevents bankruptcy. To explore the unexplored, this study aims to examine the efficacy of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and enhancing the ES of Islamic banks operating in Pakistan.

The current study measures ES through Altman's Z-score to analyze the level of the industry's stability and consequently examines the effect of ICG on the ES of Islamic banks in Pakistan for the post-financial-crises period. Using the country-level data, this study utilized a fixed-effect model and two-stage least squares (2SLS) techniques on balanced panel data spanning from 2009 to 2020 to provide empirical evidence.

The empirical results unveiled that board size and meetings have a significant positive influence on the ES while managerial ownership demonstrated an unfavorable effect on ES. Interestingly, the insignificant effect of women directors became significant with the inclusion of controlled variables. Overall, the findings indicate that ICG is an efficient tool for promoting ES in Islamic banks and preventing them from the negative effects of emerging crises.

The findings provide concrete insights for policymakers, regulators and other concerned stakeholders to execute a sturdy corporate governance system that not only oversees the economic, social and ethical aspects but also provides measures to alleviate the impacts of potential risks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examining the role of ICG in alleviating bankruptcy risk is an informative and useful endeavor for all social actors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first efforts to provide evidence-based insights on the role of ICG in preventing bankruptcy and offers a potential research direction for ES.

Islamic banking was developed to serve two objectives: to replace interest-based loan system with profit and loss sharing investment modes and to promote equity in resource allocation. The first objective is called procedural whereas the second one is termed consequential. Scholars have been debating about the success of Islamic banking in achieving these objectives. This paper aims to develop an index for measuring the extent of convergence between theory and practice of Islamic banking.

For measuring the procedural and consequential convergence between objectives and practice of Islamic banking, the paper derives a set of indicators from the celebrated theory of Islamic banking and then develops the methodology of ranking all banks in terms of those indicators.

The paper provides ranking of Islamic banks in Pakistan in the light of this index. The results indicate that none of the Islamic banks in Pakistan has been doing good enough to achieve the convergence, instead they are moving in the opposite direction over time.

Using the methodology developed in this paper, universal ranking of Islamic banks may be issued every year.

Scholars have proposed some indices for measuring the performance of Islamic banking. There are two basic problems with these proposed measures: they do not directly compare the performance of Islamic banking against its stated objectives and they naively use an additive form of index without explaining the reason for this choice, i.e. as to what are the desirable characteristics which their preferred mathematical form of index serves. The index proposed in this paper attempts to overcome these shortcomings.