MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH UNIVERSITY OF BANKING GRADUATE THESIS THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENT ON FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN VIETNAM MAJOR: FINANCE – BANKING CODE: 7 34 02 01 NGUYEN THI MAI LINH HO CHI MINH CITY, 2023 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH UNIVERSITY OF BANKING GRADUATE THESIS THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENT ON FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN VIETNAM MAJOR: FINANCE – BANKING CODE: 7 34 02 01 Student name: NGUYEN THI MAI LINH Student code: 050607190231 Class: HQ7-GE06 ADVISER DR. NGUYEN MINH NHAT HO CHI MINH CITY, 2023 i ABSTRACT Financial performance is an important indicator of a bank's survival and development amid growing international competition. Commercial banks are all operating towards profit targets, as a result of their business operations. In addition, managers are always interested in this indicator and find ways to improve financial performance.
In the period 2012 - 2022, the global economy grew slowly due to unstable economic and political situations in the world and the region. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 led to a drastic shift as digital banks gradually took over the role and position of traditional products. Therefore, an increasing number of Vietnamese commercial banks are focusing on technology investment to improve financial performance. The author has conducted a study on the impact of technology investment on the financial performance of commercial banks in Vietnam between 2012 and 2022.
Besides, the author also used research methodology, specifically Pooled OLS model, FEM model, REM model, and S-GMM method, which are based on the unbalanced panel data of 26 commercial banks in Vietnam. The research results show that financial performance increases as bank size, equity-to-total assets ratio, technology investment, liquidity ratio, and gross domestic product growth rate increase. On the contrary, financial performance decreases when the ratio of total deposits and non-performing loans ratio increase. In addition, the research results also show that the loans-to-total assets ratio and the inflation rate are not statistically significant for the financial performance of commercial banks in Vietnam.
Keywords: financial performance, technology investment, commercial banks. ii DECLARATION As the author of this graduation thesis, I declare that this thesis with the title " The impact of technology investment on financial performance of commercial banks in Vietnam" is completely made by Nguyen Thi Mai Linh, whose student code is 050607190231. Currently, I am a student in class HQ7 - GE06, majoring in Finance - Banking, Ho Chi Minh City University of Banking. This is the author's own research work and the process of making and completing this thesis is led by the instructor Dr.
Nguyen Minh Nhat. The results in the thesis are done by myself and the content in the article has never been published except for the citations in the article. I am committed to taking full responsibility for this commitment. Ho Chi Minh City, August, 2023 Author Nguyen Thi Mai Linh iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, during the process of taking and completing the graduation essay, I would like to express my deep thanks to those who have helped me so far.
In addition, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Nguyen Minh Nhat has accompanied and helped enthusiastically, guided me as well and given many helpful advice to help me do this graduation thesis. I also would like to sincerely thank Mr. Board of Directors of Ho Chi Minh City University of Banking for teaching and imparting valuable knowledge and experiences to me during my studying process.
Besides, I am also grateful to all my friends for being with me and supporting me throughout this thesis. Due to my limited practical experience, the content of the graduation thesis cannot avoid some shortcomings, I am looking forward to receiving further advice from lecturers to learn more experiences. I believe these experiences are extremely valuable so that I can develop myself well in the future. I sincerely thank you! iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF ACRONYMS .vii LIST OF GRAPHICS. Reasons for choosing the study. The research subject and scope of study. The research subject.
Scope of the research. Contributions of the research. Disposition of the dissertation. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND REVIEW OF PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES.
An overview of technology investment. Definition of technology investment in banks. The benefits of technology for commercial banks in Vietnam. Technology investment metrics.
An overview of financial performance. Definition of financial performance in banks. Financial performance metrics. The impact of technology investment on financial performance of commercial banks.
Factors affecting the financial performance of commercial banks .1 The internal (bank-specific) factors. An overview of previous studies. Review of domestic researches. Review of foreign researches.
The microeconomic elements. The macroeconomic elements. THE ANALYSIS OF EMPIRICAL RESULTS. Descriptive statistical analysis.
Correlation matrix analysis. The analysis of regression results (OLS/FEM/REM Model). Selection of appropriate models. Test of defects prediction model.
The results of overcoming the research model by FGLS method. GMM regression model method. Summarize and discuss research results. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
Suggestions and recommendations. For Vietnamese commercial banks. For the State authority. Thesis limitations and future research direction.
Limitations of the thesis. Future research direction. v vii LIST OF ACRONYMS Number Acronyms Meaning 1 CAP Equity-to-total assets ratio 2 DEP The ratio of total deposits 3 FEM Fixed Effects Model 4 FGLS Feasible Generalized Least Squares 5 GDP Gross domestic product 6 GMM Generalized method of moments 7 INF Inflation rate 8 LIQ Liquidity ratio 9 LOANS Loans-to-assets ratio 10 NPL Non-performing loans 11 NIM Net interest margin 12 OLS Ordinary least squares 13 REM Random Effects Model 14 ROA Return on assets 15 ROE Return on equity 16 S-GMM System generalized method of moments 17 SIZE Bank size 18 TE Technology investment 19 VND Viet Nam Dong viii LIST OF TABLES Table 2. Summary of related studies.
Statistics of expected signs of variables in the research model. Statistical results of variables used in the research model. Correlation coefficients between research variables. Results of Pooled OLS, FEM and REM.
Selection of models. Results of multicollinearity test. Wooldridge test results. Modified Wald test results.
Endogenous and Exogenous variables in the research model. The results of model by FGLS method. GMM endogenous test results. Summary of research results.
69 ix LIST OF GRAPHICS Graph 3. The research process. Reasons for choosing the study In the context of the fourth industrial revolution that has been taking place strongly globally, technology is considered one of the most important tools affecting the economy in general as well as the banking industry in particular in most countries in the world (Chaarani & Abiad, 2018). Under that impact, the banking sector has gone through three stages of development.
In the first period from 1866 to 1967, globalization promoted financial connections, payment systems and cross-border transactions. The end of this period was the birth of the first Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) in 1967, when there was a connection between finance and technology. The second period was from 1967 - 2008, when credit cards and interbank payment systems through electronic payment systems (SWIFT) were invented. The third phase from 2008 up to now, as digital technology has rapidly taken place with many financial technology startups who have developed e-payment services to replace traditional banking services to cope with the risks from banking operations after the 2008 global financial crisis (Arner et al.
Today, in the rapidly changing environment of digital technology, banks have few options to deal with, except to increase spending on technology investments despite the effects of these investments (Uddin et al. On the other hand, DeYoung (2001) predicted that technological progress would destroy the models being used in the development and provision of services at commercial banks. This would replace them with new ones based on the core elements of digital including Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data. Indeed, over the past two decades, the world's banking sector has been significantly affected by the rapid and remarkable progress of the pace of technological innovation (Ratten, 2008; Rishi & 2 Saxena, 2004).
In particular, banks provide different products and services to their own customers based on modern technology software (Lee et al. Investment in technology enables commercial banks to process and transmit information faster, expand their network based on their products and services, strengthen regional and global connectivity, customer access and awareness thereby significantly improving the financial performance of the bank (Campanella et al. In Vietnam, with the advancement of information technology, the commercial banking system has constantly invested and applied intellectual capital in its products and services because the effective use of technology is a very critical factor contributing to the success of banks (Goh, 2005; Kamath, 2007). Most commercial banks insist that investment in technology is vital to business operations and 96% of banks have been building development strategies based on 4.
Specifically, in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, the fact that Vietnamese commercial banks have been greatly affected by the impact of technology investment. Typically, commercial banks have applied new technical solutions to their professional operations and the provision of products and services to enhance financial performance and increase customer experience by recognizing the importance of digital technology to bank's financial performance (Trinh & Tri, 2022). Currently, there has also been much research related to digital technology and banking operations around the world such as the study of Barroso & Laborda (2022) research on digital transformation and the emergence of the fintech field, Arjun & Kuanr (2021) research on bank intelligence development in emerging markets. Although research on technology investment in the banking sector has also received much attention in Vietnam, no empirical study so far has been conducted to investigate such effects on the financial performance of Vietnamese commercial banks.
While most domestic studies such as Sang (2017), Thuong (2017), Thanh (2019), and Nhi 3 (2021) focus on factors affecting bank performance. However, all these studies have not taken into account the impact of technology investment on the financial performance of commercial banks in Vietnam. Stemming from these reasons, this thesis has been conducted in the hope of providing new contributions to the approach to measuring technology investment index by providing empirical evidence of the impact of technology investment on the performance of Vietnamese commercial banks. Therefore, the author decided to choose the thesis with the title "The impact of technology investment on financial performance of commercial banks in Vietnam".
General Objectives Based on relevant theoretical foundations, the author analyzes, evaluates and determines the impact of technology investment on financial performance at commercial banks in Vietnam from 2012 to 2022. From there, based on the research results, the author will propose several appropriate recommendations for bank administrators to invest in technology in order to enhance financial performance. Specific Objectives In order to achieve the above general objective, the author carries out three specific objectives as follows: Firstly, the study determines the impact of technology investment on the financial performance of commercial banks in Vietnam. Secondly, the thesis measures the level and direction of micro and macro factors to commercial banks in Vietnam based on quantitative analysis models.
4 Finally, the author proposes some appropriate recommendations to increase the financial performance of Vietnamese commercial banks in the near future through investment in technology. Research questions After identifying the problem and research objective, the research questions are posed to shape the scientific idea. Specifically, the research will mainly focus on the following research questions: How does technology investment affect the financial performance of commercial banks in Vietnam? How does micro and macro factors impact the financial performance of Vietnamese commercial banks?