Determinants of profitability in commercial banks in Albania

Scientific Study from the year 2018 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 12, language: English, abstract: This study examines the determinants of profitability of commercial banks in Albania. These determinants are categorized into two groups, internal factors that are the bank specific factors and external factors that are further divided into macroeconomic factors and industry specific factors. The main objective of the study is to determine the factors affecting the profitability of commercial banks and making some recommendations, that maybe can help the management and policymakers. A panel data with 16 commercial banks in Albania is analyzed for the period 2009-2014. Two indicators are used (dependent variables) for the measurement of profitability, return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). Banking specific factors that are used in this study include variables such as bank size, asset management, credit risk, liquidity of assets, capital adequacy, operational efficiency and cost of financing. On the other hand is taken into consideration only one industry specific factor, which is the concentration and macroeconomic factors such as GDP, inflation and exchange rate. To meet the main object of the research, the study is based mainly on quantitative research method, which is supplemented by a qualitative method. Quantitative data were obtained mainly from the financial statements of commercial banks, by INSTAT, Bank of Albania, and World Bank, in order to make empirical analysis needed to identify and measure the determinants of bank profitability. In particular, multiple regression analysis was used to measure the impact of the determinants of bank profitability. On the other hand, qualitative data were collected through unstructured interviews conducted with executives of finance in the albanian commercial banks. To realize empirical analysis were used the software SPSS 22 and Eviews 7.