Digital Transformation and Strategy in the Banking Sector: Evaluating the Acceptance Rate of E-Services

Digital transformation in the banking sector is a continuous process that affects both the external and internal environment by redesigning internal processes and existing methods. There are many reasons that digital transformation takes place, such as servicing remote areas without physical branches, differentiation from competitors or reduction of operating costs. In any case, there are a lot of doubts about the acceptance of digital technologies. Thus, this article examines the acceptance rate of digital transformation in the banking sector in Greece. One hundred and sixty-one employees at Greek banks completed the survey. A Multivariate Regression Analysis was implemented to analyze the items of the Technology Acceptance Model. The findings of this paper indicate the perception of bank employees with regard to new technologies. This paper provides a practical contribution for executives of Greek banking organizations to schedule targeted educational programs to facilitate the transition to the new digital era for their employees. Executives are curious if employees are ready to accept and implement digitalization in their daily job routine. Therefore, the Technology Acceptance Model can provide answers to executives in facing these challenges.

How Are Non-Performing Loans Influencing the Banks’ Efficiency?

Non-Performing Loans portfolio (NPLs) is a major issue faced by the financial system worldwide and in Greece as well with extremely influence during the financial crisis decade.The purpose of this research is to investigate and determine if and how the NPLs influence the efficiency indicators of the Greek banks and specifically how they affect efficiency of the banks.The empirical investigation of Non-Performing loans included a comparative study of indicators of efficiency of the Greek banks, National Bank of Greece, Piraeus Bank, Alpha Bank, Eurobank, Attica Bank and the Co-operative Banks of Epirus, Crete, Thessaly, and Serres, for the year 2017.The conclusions resulted concern the display of financial size of the bank sample, the correlation of loans with outflows, the multifaceted analysis of linear regression to control the effects of loans and finally the effect of lending on the banks’ performance.

Systemic stress test model for shared portfolio networks

We propose a dynamic model for systemic risk using a bipartite network of banks and assets in which the weight of links and node attributes vary over time. Using market data and bank asset holdings, we are able to estimate a single parameter as an indicator of the stability of the financial system. We apply the model to the European sovereign debt crisis and observe that the results closely match real-world events (e.g., the high risk of Greek sovereign bonds and the distress of Greek banks). Our model could become complementary to existing stress tests, incorporating the contribution of interconnectivity of the banks to systemic risk in time-dependent networks. Additionally, we propose an institutional systemic importance ranking, BankRank, for the financial institutions analyzed in this study to assess the contribution of individual banks to the overall systemic risk.

Interest rate pass through in the deposit and loan products provided by Greek banks

A core input in performing a regulatory stress test is the evolution of interest rates, as it affects the income generated from the assets’ side and the expenses from the liabilities’ side. In this work, we apply an autoregressive model with distributed lags (ADL) to quantify the pass through rates, that is, the degree and speed of incorporation of the changes of money market rates by banks into their customers deposit and loan rates. In doing so, for the liabilities’ side, we differentiate between open and term deposits, as well as between households and non-financial corporates. Our results indicate that for term deposits the long-term pass through rate is very high, exceeding 91% for non-financial corporate customers and 81% for households. For open deposits, the pass through rate dynamics appear less prevalent, amounting to 21% for non-financial corporate customers and 16% for households. When exploring the pass through rate dynamics in the assets’ side of the banks, we observe full long-term pass-through of money market rates, for mortgage and consumer loans. By contrast, the non-financial corporate loans rate is stickier and less reactive to money market rates changes, with long-term pass-through adjustment being approximately equal to 40%. Furthermore, our results provide evidence that the Greek sovereign spread movement has practically negligible pass through rate both for loan and deposit products. In particular, it hardly affects the pricing of new term deposits, with a pass through rate of around 5%. This finding can be attributed, among others factors, to the fact that the Greek sovereign credit spread has approached several times non-tradable territories, which makes it an insignificant variable in determining customer rates.

Disrupted lending relationship and borrower's strategic default: evidence from the tourism industry during the Greek economic crisis

Using a sample of bank loans to firms operating in the tourism industry for the period 2010-2015, and regional variation of tourism activities to identify the strategic defaulted firms, we examine the impact of Greek banks consolidation on the firms’payment behavior. We show that a merger-induced impairment of the lending relationship is related to a higher likelihood of strategic default by the target bank’s borrowers. In contrast, mergers with a limited impact on the lending relationship have no effect on the probability of strategic default of target bank’s borrowers. The results highlight the importance of relationship lending benefits in strategic default decisions. Our findings are robust to the alternative interpretation of soft budget constraints.

Examining operational wastes within Greek banking operations

Purpose In order to address operational effectiveness in the banking sector caused by the 2008 global economic crisis, the purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of operational wastes that exist within four large Greek banks. Design/methodology/approach A Delphi study was undertaken with ten managers and ten employees. Findings The waste of underutilised people is found to be the dominant form of waste present and affecting the efficiency of banking operations, and managers and employees consider the waste of underutilised people as having a significant influence on the efficiency of the banking sector. Practical implications This has implications for managers of banking operations needing to address efficiencies in an increasingly competitive global economic environment. The paper also highlights the drawbacks of analysing typologies of waste across organisations and industrial sectors. Originality/value While some studies have examined the overall efficiency banking sector, to date, none has explored the nature of the inefficiencies that manifest as waste.

The Establishment Digs In

This chapter considers the factors behind Greece's compliance in the first years of the crisis. It shows that in the first two years of the crisis, the “establishment triangle” revolving around the political class, private bankers, and the financial technocrats at the Bank of Greece, far from being weakened by the government's precarious fiscal position or the financial fragility of the Greek banks, actually managed to solidify its stronghold on financial policymaking through its capacity to fulfill a bridging role to foreign lenders and keep providing their fiscally distressed national government with much-needed short-term credit lines. The third enforcement mechanism, in short, was relatively effective. But while this helped internalize debtor discipline into the Greek state apparatus, it did not succeed in returning the country to solvency.