Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirement for the MSc in Finance FINANCE DISSERTATION ON DIVERSIFICATIONS AND BANK PERFORMANCE OF VIETNAMESE COMMERCIAL BANKS TRAN THAO LINH ID No: 19046142 Intake 3 Supervisor: Dr. Le Hai Trung September 2020 17014126225351000000 Executive Summary The increasing wave of financial liberalization and globalization has reshaped the banking business model. Commercial banks have diversified their income streams to non-interest incomes, such as payment services, brokerage activities, business consulting, portfolio management, guarantee, sponsorship, etc…This trend causes interest income sources to decline and increase non-interest income in many major countries and regions over the past three decades (Allen & Santomero, 2001). In the same global trend, the Vietnamese banking business has changed significantly with the noticeable expansion of non-traditional activities.
Since the integration of the banking industry is taking place strongly, bank diversification is an inevitable and objective trend. Theoretically, income diversification can improve the bank's performance by diversifying banking risks. However, the empirical evidence is far from consensus as several practical studies find that income diversification can reduce the profitability of banks. After the research process, there are very few studies analyzing the impact of diversification on banking in the Vietnamese context.
Therefore, to fill the gaps in the literature by providing a comprehensive study, this study was conducted to evaluate the impact of income diversification on the performance of commercial banks by using data from audited financial statements and quarterly reports of 13 listed commercial banks in Vietnam from 2010 to 2019. My results aimed at pointing that diversified activities heterogeneously benefit banks. While the funding diversification has a positive impact on bank performance and stability, the effect of income diversification in fact faces lower levels of bank performance. The analysis provides a framework for evaluating these issues in the Vietnam markets.
i Acknowledgements I express gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Le Hai Trung for his support to perform the laboratory analysis during this project work. I am especially sincerely grateful to his providing constructive criticism on my thesis write up and moral support at each phase of the project. I am also thankful to Do Thi Ngoc Anh and Dang Tien Dat - University of the West of England students for their ever friendly and always ready support to perform the project.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support, unconditional love and believe in me. Tran Thao Linh September 2020 ii Table of Contents Executive Summary. ii List of tables. iv List of figures.
1 Chapter 1: Theoretical Background and Literature Review. Bank diversification in Vietnam. 14 Chapter 2: Data, Methodology and Descriptive statistic. Rationale of variables.
20 Chapter 3: Empirical Results and Discussion. 33 Chapter 4: Conclusion and recommendations. 47 iii List of tables Table 1: Variables’ definition and sources used………………………………… 26 Table 2. Descriptive statistics of research variables…………………………….
The impact of income diversification on performance…. The impact of funding diversification on performance……. Hausman’s test result……………………………………. 32 iv List of figures Fig.
Trends in income diversification for the period 2010–2019……………. Trends in funding diversification for the period 2010–2019……………. 18 v Abbreviations Return on assets (ROA) Return on equity (ROE) Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Fixed effects model (FEM) Random effects model (REM) Income diversification (ID) Funding diversification (FD) Variance inflation factor (VIF) vi Introduction The banking system has been playing a key role in the stability and development of the economy, especially for a bank-based financial market as in Vietnam. With the increasing integration to the international markets, the structure of the Vietnamese banking system has changed substantially.
The restructuring of the banking industry through the merger of banks and the increasing competition from foreign banks has increased the competition in the banking system significantly. As a result, diversification is an important strategy for Vietnamese commercial banks as well as financial institutions. In particular, commercial banks in Vietnam have also gradually shifted from traditional specialized credit activities to non-traditional activities in order to diversify banking risks, generate revenue, and importantly, increase competitive opportunities. Since the ultimate goal of commercial banks is to maximize profits, thus, it is important to investigate the role of diversification to the performance of Vietnamese commercial banks.
Previous literature on the relationship between diversification and bank performance is voluminous. On the one hand, several studies advocate bank diversification and argue that this strategy can offer many benefits. For example, Laeven and Levine (2007) and Elsas et al (2010) showed that non-interest income contributed to profit growth as non-profit revenue was more stable than interest income activities. Besides, diversification in different products or markets will help a bank reduce the risk of bankruptcy because different activities will have different levels of risk and they can help offset the risk of bankruptcy or in other words, banks can take advantage of this opportunity to increase profits (Sanya & Wolfe, 2010).
Likewise, Lee et al (2014) and Saghi-Zedek (2016) stated that 1 diversification of operations improves profitability, minimizes fluctuations in income and bankruptcy of these banks. Moreover, the diversification of revenue reduces many risks and helps banks increase efficiency. On the other hand, there are many views that disagree with the bank's diversification strategy. For example, Gamra and Plihon (2011), Stiroh and Rumble (2006) suggested that increasing dependence on non-interest income will affect bank income, which does not lead to higher profits, on the contrary, it also reduces profits and has many potential risks.
In addition, due to increased fixed costs, financial leverage in banking activities increases in proportion to the decreasing profitability faced by banks (DeJonghe, 2010; Fiordelisi, et al. By experimental methods such as Baele et al (2007) shows that although diversification in the banking industry has both advantages and disadvantages, it is an inevitable trend because of the urgency that it brings to increased profits and expanded competitiveness in a challenging international integration environment at the moment. Most previous researches, however, mainly focus on the US and European markets which have a long history of economic development. Recently, the increasing role of emerging markets in Asia in general and Southeast Asia in particular in the global economy has brought much attention to their banking system structure and strategy.
Empirical studies, however, provide mixed results. Trivedi (2015) and Ismail et al (2015) find that diversification of fee and non-interest income sources contributes significantly to increased profits and different non- interest income generating activities will bring different sources of income to set up appropriate strategies. This argument is supported by experimental studies such as Nisar et al (2018), Moudud-UI-Huq et al (2018). On the contrary, when 2 researching many aspects of diversification, Nguyen Thi Lam Anh (2018) believed that not all types of diversification bring positive benefits to bank performance and that depending on each country, there will be a different degree of influence.
In this thesis, I explore the relationship between diversification and bank performance for Vietnamese commercial banks. In particular, I add the literature by considering not only income diversification but also the funding diversification. Previous studies, such as of Hiep et al (2019), Ngoc (2019), Quynh (2020) and Cuong et al (2020) only focus on income diversification and there are mixed opinions about its effect on the bank performance. Thus, my study provides more comprehensive research on the impacts of diversification in both income diversification and funding diversification to the bank performance in Vietnam commercial banks.
In this thesis, I employ a panel data collected from the audited financial statements and quaterly reports of 13 commercial banks which has been listed in Vietnam in the period 2010-2019 from S&P CapitalIQ. To investigate the relationship between diversification and bank performance, I perform a panel data regression with Pooled OLS, fixed effects model (FEM) and random effects model (REM) methods to solve endogenous problems, variance, and autocorrelation in the research model. The purpose of this study are: (1) explore the advantages and disadvantages in the process of diversifying the banking system; (2) evaluate the effectiveness of methods of diversifying the banking system in Vietnam in recent years and suggest some policy recommendations to the authorities and banks in order to continue the process of diversifying the banking system effectively in the future. 3 Consequently, the thesis is structured as follows: Chapter I provide the literature review on diversification and bank performance.
Chapter II presents the data and methodology on Vietnamese banks. Chapter III analyses the empirical results, while Chapter IV concludes the thesis and gives the recommendations. 4 Chapter 1: Theoretical Background and Literature Review 1. Literature review Diversification in the banking sector often leads to an increase of costs as well as non-interest income in the operating income structure of a bank.
As a result, diversification changes the bank's operational efficiency from a profitability perspective. The Economies of Scale theory states that the expansion or development of new financial products and services by commercial banks or the expansion of the scope of operations within the country or internationally would lead to a reduction in the fixed costs and utilizing management capacities for different financial products and services or for affiliates in different regions and countries (Drucker & Puri, 2009). Current empirical studies on the operation of commercial banks have not yet provided a convincing answer to the question that “Should commercial banks diversify financial services, products and increase your presence in different territories and countries? ”. The empirical studies on this topic can be divided into two conflicting views: (1) Diversification has a positive effect on the performance of commercial banks; (2) Diversification in banking does not improve the operational efficiency of commercial banks.
On the one hand, several studies advocate diversification and argue that it could help to increase the bank's operational efficiency and stability through improved economies of scope (Diamond, 1991; Rajan, 1992). With the same amount of customer information, if in the traditional way, that information is only used for lending purposes, however, when the banks use diversification, that information will be used for many purposes in providing other services such as securities 5 underwriting, brokerage, etc. Therefore, the bank can expand many different services, and the performance of banks will also be significantly improved. Baele et al (2007) studied the effect of diversity on banking activities through data of 17 banks in the period 1989 - 2004 in Europe in two diverse aspects: revenue diversification and asset diversification.
The research results show that the diversity of income has a positive effect on the bank's operations. Specifically, the bank that has a higher non-interest income ratio of total revenue will have better performance and asset diversification does not have a significant impact on banking operations. Besides, the diversification of products and services also helps commercial banks to meet the maximum demand for financial services or stimulate the use of different financial services by available customers in the bank thereby contributing to increasing profits for the banks themselves (Drucker & Puri, 2009). Rossi et al (2009) analyzed the effects of bank diversification on risk, cost, and profit efficiency in Austria banks during the period 1997-2003.
They showed that although diversification has a negative effect on cost-effectiveness, it helps to increase profitability and reduce the risks of banks. Also in another influential study, Elsas and colleagues (2010) used data sources from developed countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, UK, the US, Spain, and Switzerland to find out about the impact of diversification to the bank's business performance. The results have proven that diversification banks boost their profits, even during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. In the same manner, Sanya and Wolfe (2010) researched the impact of revenue diversification and banking efficiency through observational analysis of commercial banks from 11 emerging economies in the period from 2000 to 2007 using System Generalized Method of Moments 6 estimators (System GMM).
They showed that diversification by higher involvement in non-interest activities helps to minimize bankruptcy risk, enhance the profitability and stability of commercial banks.