Determinants of Profitability of Listed Commercial Banks in India

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2019 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1, Bharathiar University, language: English, abstract: This study seeks to understand the impact of a series of key internal determinants of the profitability of listed commercial banks in India. Following are the research questions raised in this regard: Are there differences in key performance measures of private and public sector banks? Does the size of the bank affect bank profitability? Does the bank's lending activity and income generation capability affect its profitability? Does the productivity of the bank impact its profitability? Does the bank's asset quality and capital adequacy affect its profitability? Can bank profitability be forecasted from determinants? The banking industry in India is diverse in nature. There are more than sixty listed commercial banks in India. These include banks in the public and private sector and the banks are of varying size and profitability levels. As noted early, the Indian banking system is faced with severe asset quality issues. The banking system has been flooded with non-performing assets which have significantly eroded the bank margins. Recent adverse developments in the banking sector such as lending scams and questionable advances to troubled segments of the economy have dominated the financial press. While this being so, this research is aimed at examining the contributing factors of profitability in banks. Key measures of bank profitability include the return of assets, return on equity and net interest margin. There are several possible drivers of bank profitability. These include asset quality, capital adequacy, liquidity, productivity and income. While several studies till date have looked at key determinants of bank profitability, very few studies have compared the effect of key determinants for a larger cross section of banks that represent the banking sector in India as a whole. Hence an attempt has been made in this study to know the key drivers of profitability of the banking sector. The study also looks at the similarities or the differences of the influence of selected determinants on profitability measures across the sample of banks selected for research. This study also compares the key drivers of bank profitability for public and private sector banks and an attempt is made to develop models to forecast bank profitability from key determinants.

Rajveer Rawlin received his MBA in finance from the Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK. He is an avid market watcher having followed capital markets in the US and India since 1993. His research interests includes areas of Capital Markets, Banking, Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management and has over 20 years of experience in the above areas. He has several publications in the above areas.