The impact of COVID-19 and specific control indicators on the performance of selected universal banks in the Philippines

• Main Authors: Ang, Keana Aedrielle Modesto, Lim, Bea Alexis Gotay, Tan, Issey Miuccia Domminiq Uy, Zhang, Jenny Huang
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Universal banks—Philippines; Rate of return—Philippines; COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020 - —Philippines—Influence; Finance and Financial Management
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdb_finman/30; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdb_finman/article/1034/viewcontent/The_impact_of_COVID_19_and_specific_control_indicators_on_the_per2.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

This research examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and specific control indicators such as size (total assets), leverage (debt to equity ratio), and fee-based income on the performance of banks in the Philippines as measured by Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), Net Interest Margin (NIM), and Loan-to-Assets Ratio over a seven-year period from ten selected Philippines universal banks. In order to identify significant differences in the banks performance prior to and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test was performed. Then, two-panel regressions were done separately for pre-COVID-19 data (2015-2019) and during-COVID-19 data (2020-2021). For both analyses, panel regression was done with the control indicators being the independent variables and bank performance being the dependent variables. For the sign test conducted, it showed that only ROA and NIM had a significant difference before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Philippines' universal bank performance at the time when the study was conducted is not that destructive. For the results before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was found that the total fee-based income was the control variable that had the most significant impact on bank performances such as ROA, ROE, and NIM. Therefore, this study expounds that fee-based income is one of the potential sources of income for banks and it has relatively low unpaid risks prior to COVID-19. For the results during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study suggests that the ROE and LTA are the two variables that are most affected by the control indicators of size, leverage, and fee-based income. Thus, banks with big assets would have declining ROE during the pandemic because of their weak asset portfolios. These banks may also have high LTA during the pandemic due to adjustment in the wholesale borrowing. Moreover, highly leveraged banks are more inclined to participate in lending operations, and the fee-based income had contributed to the improvement of ROE during the pandemic period.