Effect of Credit Risk and Liquidity Risk on the Performance of Commercial Banks in Ghana

Abstract

In recent years, commercial banks in Ghana have seen great development in assets and profitability and have been playing increasingly important roles on national economy and social development which has become irreplaceable in a wide range. However, financial risks have been identified as the cause of hinderances to the banks’ normal development and has rendered some banks to fail. In recent years, Ghana’s commercial banks have faced vigorous challenges.  An important setback is the collapsing and merging of commercial banks and the increment of the minimum capital requirement. The cause of these misfortunes can be attributed to the combine effect of liquidity risk and credit risk since bank managements, supervisory authorities and government overlooked their impact. The focus of this paper is to study the impact of credit risk and liquidity risk on the performance of commercial banks in Ghana. The paper studied the annual and financial reports of licensed commercial banks in Ghana over a period of 14 years. The hypotheses generated for the study was tested using the OLS regression. The results revealed a negative relationship between non-performing loans and performance (ROA). Similarly, credit ratio and loan to deposit ratio also had a negative effect on ROA of banks in Ghana. On the contrary, liquidity ratio revealed to have a positive relationship with the dependent variable. The study recommended that, Ghanaian commercial banks must adopt a general framework for liquidity risk and credit risk management to ensure avoidance or reduction in the occurrence of these risks. Control variables help to check the robustness and also explain the objectives of the study in a more precise way.

Keywords: Credit Risk; Liquidity Risk; Commercial Banks: Performance; Ghana

DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/11-17-11

Publication date:October 31^st 2020