Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine the influence of both internal and external factors that determine the profitability of Ghanaian banks. The period under consideration extends from 1997-2014. To determine factors that determine the commercial bank profitability in Ghana, the research employed random effects and pooled ordinary least square models. Internal variables, both financial and non-financial were obtained from the database of Ghana Association of Bankers over the period 1997-2014. The macroeconomic variables were retrieved from Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and Bank of Ghana (BOG) databases. The results of our study reveal that internal and external variables significantly influence bank profitability, non-interest income is not the sole determinant of profitability as other internal variables, such as capital to assets, GDP growth are statistically significant. However, determinants such as liquidity, deposit ratio, overhead, non-performing loans, number of employees, inflation and real interest rate do not impact significantly on banks’ profitability in Ghana. The research could not include more qualitative factors. Future research could include more qualitative factors, for example, management leadership style with the quantitative factors and test the long run effects using a cointegration approach. The main value of this paper is the analysis of new empirical evidence using a current data.

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