The Impact of Corporate Disclosures and Risk Management on the Performance of Banks in Pakistan

Abstract

This research study undertakes the relationship between disclosure, risk management and performance of commercial banks in Pakistan with a view to ascertain the relationship between disclosure and financial performance, risk management and financial performance in both small size and large size banks. The disclosure analysis has been carried out on the basis of financial disclosure and non financial disclosure of information by the large commercial banks and small commercial banks in Pakistan from 2005 to 2014. These findings show that small commercial banks are more efficient in disclosing information than the large commercial banks. Secondary data analysis was carried out to test the relationship between disclosure, risk management and performance of commercial banks in Pakistan. It has been concluded from the analysis that disclosure has a significant positive impact on the performance of small commercial banks and large commercial banks in Pakistan. The proxies used for disclosure is corporate disclosure index and return on assets and return on equity are used to measure bank performance. The proxies used for risk management are interest rate risk, liquidity risk, operation risk, capital adequacy ratio, non performing loans ratio, value at risk, standard deviation of ROA and default risk. It is concluded from the results that large banks manage their risk efficiently than small banks. The primary data analysis is carried out using seven questions for disclosure practices, eleven questions for risk management and four questions for bank performance. The questionnaire was distributed among bank directors, branch managers, operation managers and credit managers. The primary data analysis reveals that disclosure and risk management practices have a significant positive impact on the performance of large commercial banks. It is concluded that small banks do not manage their risk efficiently. It is also concluded from the results of secondary data analysis and primary data analysis that findings of primary data strengthen and support the results of secondary data analysis as the results in both the cases are parallel. A comparative analysis on the basis of independent T-test for large banks and small banks disclosure and risk pattern shows that small banks have better disclosure pattern on the basis of corporate disclosure index. Likewise, comparative analysis for risk proxies of interest rate risk, liquidity risk, operation risk, capital adequacy ratio, non performing loans ratio, value at risk, standard deviation of ROA default risk shows that large commercial banks have lower risk than small commercial banks in Pakistan.