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This study examines the relationship between bank-specific variables, macroeconomic variables and non-performing loans (NPLs) in the seven countries of Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) during the pre-COVID-19and COVID-19 pandemic. This study adopts panel data regression and distributed lagged regression to examine the impact of bank-specific variables and macroeconomic variables as NPL determinants. The results show that bank-specific variables significantly correlate to NPL, but limited evidence indicates the influence of macroeconomic variables during pre-COVID. Nonetheless, macroeconomic variables are significant to NPL with the emergence of the pandemic, while the bank-specific variables are found to be insignificant. It shows that macroeconomic variables have a greater impact during the turbulent period as they affect most businesses, especially during the pandemic. Furthermore, macroeconomic variables are observed to have a stronger influence on developed countries, but the impact of bank-specific variables is stronger in emerging countries. The results of this study assist policymakers, regulators, banks and governments in identifying the determinants of high NPL as the indicator of a financial crisis. Greater emphasis shall be given to the changes in macroeconomic variables.

The Indian banking industry is going through turbulent times. With the lowering of entry barriers and blurring product lines of banks and non-banks since the financial sector reforms, banks are functioning increasingly under competitive pressures. Hence, it is imperative that banks maintain a loyal customer base. In order to achieve this and improve their market positions, many retail banks are directing their strategies towards increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty through improved service quality. Moreover, with the advent of international banking and innovations in the marketplace, customers are having greater and greater difficulty in selecting one institution from another.

Hence, to gain and sustain competitive advantages in the fast changing retail banking industry in India, it is crucial for banks to understand in-depth what customers perceive to be the key dimensions of service quality and to evaluate banks on these dimensions. This is because if service quality dimensions can be identified, service managers should be able to improve the delivery of customer perceived quality during the service process and have greater control over the overall outcome.

The study suggests that customers distinguish four dimensions of service quality in the case of the retail banking industry in India, namely, customer-orientedness, competence, tangibles and convenience. A methodological innovation in this study has been in the use of TOPSIS in the field of customer-perceived service quality. TOPSIS has been used to evaluate and ranking the relative performance of the banks across the service quality dimensions. Identifying the underlying dimensions of the service quality construct and evaluating the performance of the banks across these factors is the first step in the definition and hence provision of quality service in the Indian retail banking industry.

Software development with its unique characteristics having knowledge-intensive and human-oriented aspects and complex domains, challenges organizations. The timely outcomes with high quality and desired cost that directly affect customer satisfaction have an important place in many organizations, including banks. In the last decade, as an emerging technique for business processes management, process mining has been applied in many domains, including manufacturing, supply chain, government, healthcare, and software engineering. There are limited number of studies on process mining techniques carried out for the software process, especially in the banking sector. A lack of tool infrastructure enabling to run the entire software development process and the challenges in integrating processed data from separated varying tools and assets complicate the use of process mining for software processes. This paper aims to identify the improvement points in the software development process of the Kuveyt Turk Participation Bank in Turkey through the surfacing actions. The findings and results are gathered by the application of process mining techniques of bupaR, and evaluation is provided by experts in the bank. After that, the relevant process improvements are identified. The results of this paper show that using process mining provides the organization with beneficial results, in particular, and a comprehensive view of the end-to-end Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) processes.

Theoretically optimal responses of banks to various liquidity and solvency shocks are modeled. The proposed framework is based on a risk-adjusted return portfolio choice in multiple periods subject to the default risk related either to liquidity or solvency problems. Performance of the model and sensitivity of optimal balance sheet structures to some key parameters of the model are illustrated in a specific calibrated setup. The results of the simulations shed light on the effectiveness of the liquidity and solvency regulation. The flexible implementation of the model and its semi-analytical solvability allows for various easy applications of the framework for the macro-prudential policy analysis.

Based on my more than 40 years of practical experience in banking and my forward-looking vision as a banker, I would share the five major development trends of banks with the distinguished guests under the theme of “The New Horizon of Banking”, including: (1) ESG as an essential embodiment of contemporary responsible finance; (2) the digital transformation of the banking industry as a long-term evolutionary process; (3) the evolution of payment models and the new state of money; (4) cross-industry alliances between the banking and nonbanking industries; and (5) the increasing importance of regulatory technology, RegTech.

By the end of the 1990s, the Singaporean government had recognised the need to open up its banking sector so as to remain competitive in the global economy. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) thus began deregulation of the banking sector in 1999 to strengthen the competitiveness of local banks relative to their foreign competitors through mergers. This paper employs a nonparametric Malmquist productivity index to provide measure of productivity, technological change and efficiency gains over the period 1995–2005. The findings reveal some total factor productivity growth associated with deregulation and scale efficiency improvement largely from mergers amongst the local banks.

This article examines the dynamic relationships between competitive strategy and information technology (IT)-based product and process innovation in financial services. The study draws on detailed case studies of five IT-based innovations: Interbranch Online service, Automated Teller Machine service, Credit Card service, Remote Banking service, and Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale service. It examines the development of these innovations in the Thai banking industry from the mid-1960s. The results indicate the limitations of the Reverse Product Cycle model approach, and an alternative conceptual framework and a country-specific innovation model are proposed. Possible avenues for further research on innovation in services and service innovation are suggested, together with steps towards developing a unified approach to innovation and competition for both the service and manufacturing functions.

Islamic fintech literature growth rapidly, and several literature trends have occurred. This paper conducts a systematic literature review of the papers about the challenges of Islamic fintech. For this goal, three main categories are created. The first focuses on the Shariah and legal issues of Islamic fintech because these are the main difference between Islamic finance and its conventional counterpart and therefore are unique to Islamic finance. The second category is on the challenges of Islamic crowdfunding, microfinance, SMEs, and other related institutions. The last category focuses on user and software-based challenges, as most Islamic financial institutions significantly lack experience in this area. Further studies must focus on each challenge and find solutions by opening stagnations.

The Cambodian banking sector has rapidly expanded in recent decades, although there are concerns about the performance of Cambodian banks and the country’s banking sector. A paucity of empirical evidence to clarify the real issues in the banking sector also makes it difficult to formulate effective policy measures to address any potential problems. This study provides empirical evidence by estimating the cost function and efficiencies of 34 commercial banks over the period from 2012 to 2015. We find that the average cost efficiency scores range from 0.60 when measuring bank outputs as loan and deposit amounts, and 0.77 when measuring bank outputs as interest and non-interest income, suggesting that if they are operated more efficiently, they could cut costs by 40% in fund mobilization and 23% in profit making while keeping the same output level. We also find that the Cambodian banks have experienced an improvement in efficiency scores over the period for both aspects of banking activities. Furthermore, we find that expanding a branch network into rural areas is inefficient for bank management, and holding excessive liquidity is associated with higher efficiency, but diversification in bank business operations is negatively associated with cost efficiency of Cambodian commercial banks.

Banks are important for mobilizing savings and then channeling those funds to productive investment projects. While providing these and other services that contribute to economic growth and development, banks take on various types of risks with the expectation that the return they receive will compensate for the risks. This paper presents a simple model and tests the extent to which information asymmetry between bank owners and depositors induces risk-shifting behavior that allows for higher bank net interest margins. The empirical results support the hypothesis that the greater the degree of information asymmetry the higher net interest margins base upon a sample of 3,115 banks in 98 countries.

This paper evaluates factors that encourage or impede cross-border mergers and acquisitions in banking. The effects of bank specific features, as well as bank regulatory factors, from both target and acquiring banks' perspectives, are estimated. Three comprehensive databases are combined to provide a unique dataset to study cross-border merger and acquisition activities of banks. Banking sector regulatory variables included make this study among the first to empirically and comprehensively analyze the interrelationship between bank regulation and cross-border bank mergers and acquisitions. The results indicate that both bank characteristics and country specific characteristics are important determinants of banks' cross-border merger and acquisition activities.

We examine the relative efficiency of a unique set of banks, Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs). MDIs are led by minorities and typically serve minority populations. Given Social Economic Status (SES) skews across racial/ethnic groups in the United States, operation within minority communities appear, prima facie, to be relatively expensive and thus inefficient. We examine the return on assets (ROA) and small business lending efficiency of MDIs when compared to what we categorize as “non-MDI” depositories, ceteris paribus. We also examine these institutions for a period that includes a recent environmental shock, the 2008 financial crisis and the post-recessionary period. Using data from the Reports of Condition and Income (call reports) for a substantial set of FDIC-insured banks in the United States, we apply a data envelopment analysis (DEA) to determine how a set of MDIs perform relative to comparable institutions. Recognizing that MDIs are not homogeneous, we also examine relative efficiency across types of MDIs by racial/ethnic grouping. The results indicate that MDIs are not less efficient systematically and that there are differences across MDI types.

We examine the relative institutional failure risks for three sets of bank depositories: Community Development Banking Institutions (CDBIs), Minority Depositories (MDIs) and what we term Non-Mission Depository Institutions (NMDIs). CDBIs have primary missions of community development and serving underserved populations; MDIs are typically led by minorities and serve minority populations (a single institution can be both a CDBI and an MDI, either or neither). In this analysis, NMDIs represent all other depository banks. Given their operation within lower-income and minority communities, MDIs and CDBIs appear, prima facie, to face greater institutional failure risks. We examine these risks across each set of institutions, ceteris paribus. Utilizing data from a number of sources, including the Reports of Condition and Income (call reports) for a substantial set of FDIC-insured banks in the United States, we apply a modified Capital, Assets, Management, Earnings and Liquidity model (CAMEL) to measure the predictive likelihood of failure. Recognizing that MDIs are not homogeneous, we also examine relative institutional failure across types of depositories. The results indicate that CDBIs and MDIs are systematically at lower failure risks and that there are differences across service designations.

This paper investigates the importance and the determinants of trust in a lending situation using a controlled experiment. We find that communication can facilitate collaboration between lenders and borrowers through three channels of trust: (1) an information channel, (2) a preference channel, and (3) a reciprocity channel. Our results highlight the role of trust in mitigating the moral hazard problem in lending.

This paper summarises research on the mechanisms used by banks to align the interests of their workers with the goal of long-term profit maximization. Banking was characterised by moral hazard, and the monitoring technology of the period was far from perfect. The banks incentivized the workers by establishing well-defined career structures within internal labour markets, by strongly tying salary to tenure and attaching large salary increases to promotion. A worker who quit or was dismissed was punished with a considerable loss of lifetime earnings. Conversely, one who exceeded the norms was rewarded by substantial earnings growth associated with seniority and promotion.

This study examines the regulatory hypothesis for bank dividend payouts using a panel dataset of 229 Italian banks over the period 2005–2012. Regulatory hypothesis suggests that undercapitalized banks face more regulatory pressure for increasing capital levels by paying lower amount of dividends. Empirical results support the regulatory hypothesis by finding that the Italian banks having lower equity to total assets ratios or lower regulatory capital ratios retain more profits and pay lower amount of dividends. Results also suggest that dividend payer banks try to maintain dividends at previous level by not skipping or reducing dividends. Results further support that Fama and French (2001)'s three characteristics of dividend payers are also applicable to banks. That is, big-in-size, more profitable and low growth Italian banks pay higher amount of dividends. Findings of this study have important implications for recent regulatory proposals that suggest a direct regulation of dividends. A direct regulation of dividends, on one hand, and regulatory pressure on dividend payout decisions through capital requirements, on the other hand, may have unintended consequences for dividends as signaling and agency cost reducing tools.