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This study aims to investigate the efficiency of Indian commercial banks from 2002 to 2018 using the stochastic frontier analysis.

This study uses the parametric approach of the stochastic frontier to examine the technical efficiency of banks acknowledging exogenous shocks, omitted variables and measurement errors, filling a gap in the existing financial literature. The scope of this study was constrained to 71 scheduled commercial banks to make it manageable and productive with 1,036 observations.

The results show that the mean technical efficiency of new private banks remained constant at 92.7% during the study period because of technology diffusion in banking systems. The technical efficiency of the nationalized, old private and foreign banks has enhanced over the period because of the efficient utilization of various innovative information technology services such as mobile banking, cheque truncation system, magnetic ink character recognition. However, the foreign banks are still laggards with a mean technical efficiency of 81.7%. The empirical findings suggest that new private sector banks depict higher efficiency than nationalized, old private and foreign banks.

This study’s sample represents all categories of banks (public, private and foreign) including the banks that merged or consolidated during the period of study. To achieve the desired results, the authors incorporate the consolidated and merged banks in their data set. Further, the authors excluded all scheduled small finance banks and scheduled payment banks from their analysis, as these entities commenced operations post-2015. Additionally, the authors also excluded regional rural banks because of their distinct mandate aimed at servicing the rural populace and agricultural sector.

This study contributes to the literature on the performance of conventional banks in general and emerging markets, in particular, using the most recent data and covering a relatively long period using the stochastic frontier approach.

This chapter examines three common fintech use cases transforming the financial industry. First, the chapter introduces fintech's role in enhancing financial services and promoting financial inclusion, especially through digital platforms. Second, it investigates various fintech applications that support financial institution management by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Finally, the chapter explores fintech use cases related to the regulatory environment, including regulatory technology (regtech), blockchain technology, and cryptocurrencies. The insights presented in this chapter cater to researchers and practitioners keen on better understanding fintech's diverse applications in the ever-evolving financial industry landscape.

This study aims to explore the themes of “Fintech” and “Financial Inclusion” since their inception using bibliometric analysis and pave the way for future research agenda.

The research is based on 351 publications from the Scopus database, covering timespan from 2007 to September 2023. The bibliometric analysis involves performance metrics (e.g. publication year, notable articles, leading journals and influential authors) and scientific mapping (e.g. word map analysis, three-field plot, bibliographic coupling, co-occurrence network analysis and thematic mapping). Tools used include Biblioshiny for performance analysis and VOSviewer for visualization.

The bibliometric analysis reveals the publication trends, most influential authors, articles, journals, countries and important keywords. Subsequently, it presents the network connections among them in the “Fintech” and “Financial inclusion” fields. It identified emerging research diversifications in the literature on fintech and financial inclusion, while performance and citation analysis reveal significant growth in publications since 2019. Science mapping identifies four major clusters of research themes: measuring financial inclusion, leveraging data and analytics, technological change through infrastructure and access and usage of financial services. The study emphasizes the importance of Fintech in enhancing financial inclusion, particularly in developing regions.

The limitation of this study is the extraction of research articles from a single database, Scopus. The study emphasizes the importance of Fintech in enhancing financial inclusion, particularly in developing regions. Future research could explore the role of Fintech in achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals and the G20 High-Level Principles for Digital Financial Inclusion. Additionally, there is a need to examine the behavioral changes induced by Fintech in traditional financial institutions and end-users across different economies.

This is one of the comprehensive studies to explore “Fintech” and “Financial Inclusion” from a bibliometric lens. The study highlights and discusses the recent themes in fintech and financial inclusion from broader social and managerial perspective.

This article aims to investigate how institutional characteristics affect the level of financial development of economies collectively and compare between developed and undeveloped economies.

A dynamic panel with 131 countries, including developed and developing ones, was utilized; the estimators of the generalized method of moments system (GMM system) model were selected because they have econometric characteristics more suitable for analysis, providing superior statistical precision compared to traditional linear estimation methods.

The results from the full panel suggest that concrete and well-defined institutions are important for financial development, confirming previous research, with a more limited scope than the present work.

Limitations of this research include the availability of data for all countries worldwide, which would make the research broader and more complete.

A panel of countries was used, divided into developed and developing countries, to analyze the impact of institutional variables on the financial development of these countries, which is one of the differentiators of this work. Another differentiator of this research is the presentation of estimates in six different configurations, with emphasis on the GMM system model in one and two steps, allowing for comparison between results.

Even if digital financial services have a positive impact on financial inclusion, it creates a digital as well as gender divide within and across countries, creating regional disparity even within developing nations. Though pandemic has initiated digitalization of various services, there has been scanty research on whether digital transfer of income can improve digital financial inclusion in post-pandemic era, especially in developing countries. The purpose of the current study is to explain the regional disparity within developing countries from three regions East Asia Pacific, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, using latest World Findex data, 2021.

The author takes an instrumental variable approach to run bivariate probit model to find the factors that motivate the users to make digital payments.

The study observes that electronic transfer of wages, government transfers and remittances can motivate individuals to make use of digital mode of transactions and mobile. The practice of formal saving and borrowings are the prerequisites. However, this mechanism holds good for East Asia Pacific and not for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, which are poor in information and communication technology infrastructure. Women are lagging behind men, but digital transfer of wages motivate them to make digital transaction.

Digitalization of all government services and provision of affordable mobile network and internet services are necessary for regions like South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. In East Asia Pacific region, data protection, data governance and better regulatory framework are required. Higher female labor force participation with digital transfer of wages and empowerment with smartphones are key to reducing the Gender gap.

The current study corrects for the possible endogeneity issue, which the extant literature has not paid attention to, and provides region-specific and gender-specific policy recommendations for an improved digital inclusion.

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of the banking market discipline in relation to the development of Financial Technology (FinTech) startups.

Using panel data collected from 144 banks in Indonesia from 2004 to 2018, this study’s regression models were estimated using fixed effects with robust standard errors.

This study finds that FinTech startups disturb bank deposits. Meanwhile, market discipline exists in Indonesian banks, as indicated by depositors’ behavior with higher credit and liquidity risks. However, market discipline does not exist for bank insolvency risk, which is indicated by a significant and positive relationship with the dependent variable. Therefore, the higher the number of FinTech startups, the more effective the market discipline. Empirical findings also revealed that the joint impact between FinTech startups and bank risk is also important in explaining the difference in the effectiveness of banking market discipline.

This study has policy implications for banks in mitigating risk associated with market discipline and instability of financial intermediation.

This study offers a significant contribution to the empirical literature because it specifically explores the effectiveness of the banking market discipline by focusing on the joint impact of FinTech startups and bank risk on deposits. Furthermore, this study contributes to providing empirical evidence that links between FinTech startups and bank risk affect depositor behavior at government-owned, private, large and small, as well as nonmobile and mobile adoption banks.

This paper aims to examine the influence of sustainability reporting on bank performance. Furthermore, this study investigates the impact of the country’s economic development, financial system and crisis in moderating sustainability reporting and bank performance relationship.

The sample consists of 400 listed banks from 19 countries over the 2009–2022 period. Panel fixed-effect regression is applied, and System Generalized Method of Moments is used as robustness to address endogeneity concerns. The results are robust and survive several sensitivity tests.

The results, aligning with legitimacy and agency theories, suggest a negative relationship between sustainability reporting and bank performance. Based on further classifications, results suggest the negative (positive) impact of country’s financial system (economic development) in moderating the sustainability reporting and bank performance nexus. Finally, this study documents the positive influence of sustainability reporting on bank performance during the crisis period. Overall, the findings fail to support the reduced information asymmetry accruing from higher sustainability disclosures in developing and bank-based economies.

This study has important implications for regulators, policymakers and other stakeholders, especially in light of recent banking scandals that have deteriorated stakeholders' faith in financial institutions' reporting quality.

This study extends the scant literature on sustainability reporting in banking from a cost-benefit vantage point. Furthermore, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no previous research has examined the moderating role of the country’s financial structure and crisis in sustainability reporting and bank performance relationship.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between financial inclusion and risk-taking by Chinese banks.

It uses the panel data from Chinese banks ranging from 2011 to 2019 and applies system generalized method of moments to measure coefficients. To get in-depth understanding of the relationship between above-mentioned variables, the analysis for commercial, cooperative, listed, unlisted, small and large banks has been done. Financial inclusion index has been measured based on demographic and geographic aspects by using the principal component analysis, and bank risk-taking has been proxied by z-score.

The findings reveal an inverse relationship between financial inclusion and bank risk-taking which implies that an increase in financial inclusion results in lesser risk for the banks, i.e. diversification hypothesis applies. However, the results for unlisted and large banks show a different story where an increase in financial inclusion results in higher bank risk and vice versa.

The present study offers several valid and convincing implications for consumers, policymakers and banking sector regulators.

Banks play a vital role in the economy. Investigating their competitive environment is crucial to ensuring economic stability and development. The FinTech disruption has risks and opportunities for incumbent banks, and it can be valuable to investigate its effects on banking performance. Therefore, the aim of this study is to assess whether investment in FinTech is associated with better performance of Indian banks during 2012–2018.

To do this, a sample of Indian banks was investigated between 2012 and 2018 using k-means and hierarchical cluster analysis, ANOVA, and pairwise comparison tests.

Results of the analysis strongly suggest that investment in FinTech is associated with better banking performance. Higher FinTech investments, represented by mobile transaction volume, are associated with higher efficiency scores and accounting-based performance. In particular, banks that invest in FinTech and have relatively low non-performing loans have a 7.7% higher Return on Employment (ROE) than banks with exceptionally low FinTech use and no significant investment in smart branches.

Therefore, it can be recommended that Indian banks adopt a forward-looking strategic approach when making investment decisions regarding new technologies. Failing to adapt to the FinTech disruption may result in poor value creation prospects in the long run.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that analyses. We are not aware of any similar study on whether investment in FinTech is associated with better performance of the Indian banks during 2012–2018.

This study aims to use institutional and upper echelons theories to comprehensively investigate the intricate interplay between TMT legal expertise and firms' adaptive strategies in legal contexts, notably within emerging economies. It explores how upper echelons experiences shape opportunistic compliance strategies, impacting value and risk perceptions. Drawing on upper echelons theory, the research probes how TMT legal expertise molds firms’ involvement in significant lawsuits, accounting for influential roles. It scrutinizes TMT’s impact on legal strategies, positing that managerial discretion emerges from environmental factors, organizational attributes and executive traits. The study underscores TMT’s internal incentives and external factors’ interplay, molding strategic legal engagement.

To validate this framework, statistical analysis is performed on data from 2,584 Chinese-listed firms. The data set spans 2010–2015, with 5,713 material lawsuits. Chosen due to reliable institutional-level incentives data from the China Market Index Database, years 2016–2019 are excluded for methodological disparities. Moreover, 2007–2009 is omitted to mitigate the potential financial crisis impact. This study’s 11,272 observations ensure robust empirical exploration, offering insights into the interplay of TMT legal expertise, institutional factors and firms’ legal strategies.

The study reveals that firms led by executives with legal expertise are more prone to engage in significant lawsuits, indicating strategic use of legal skills. TMT age moderates this, with older teams less likely to engage. TMT tenure’s effect remains unclear due to tenure-risk preference complexity. Institutional factors matter; less legally mature regions reduce managers’ legal risk intention. Results confirm hypotheses and highlight executive human capital’s impact on firms’ legal strategies.

This study acknowledges contributions while highlighting limitations, including the need for detailed distinctions in lawsuit roles and exploration of heterogeneous TMT power dynamics. Further research is proposed for nuanced power dynamics and comprehensive TMT legal background data. The study advances upper echelons theory by introducing TMT legal expertise as a factor influencing strategic lawsuit behavior. It challenges institutional theory by showing the adaptable legal context, beyond fixed constraints. Moderating factors – group risk attitude and external knowledge – deepen understanding of upper echelons’ impact. Enhanced data collection is encouraged to address limitations and refine findings.

This study’s implications extend to managerial practices. Firms should acknowledge the dynamic legal system, using TMT legal expertise for strategic legal challenges. Executives should pragmatically approach regulations. While legal professionals enhance compliance, caution is needed in selecting TMT members with legal expertise due to the risk of misusing it for unnecessary litigation, potentially misaligned with financial performance goals.

This study combines institutional and upper echelons theories to explore TMT legal expertise’s impact on firms’ adaptive strategies in emerging economies. It challenges the idea of a universally constraining legal environment and highlights how TMT legal expertise enhances firms’ management of complex legal risks. The research introduces TMT legal expertise as an influencing factor in strategic lawsuits, revealing nuanced relationships between legal contexts and strategic decisions. The findings enrich upper echelons theory, challenge conventional institutional views and identify moderating factors that deepen the understanding of upper echelons’ influence in legal landscapes.