Effects of Affiliation With the Financial Conglomerate on Bank Liquidity and Solvency in the Visegrad Countries

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the liquidity and solvency of commercial banks in the Visegrad countries during the 2000-2016 period and to determine whether banks that belong to a financial conglomerate are more or less liquid and solvent than other banks in the sector. We used four liquidity ratios and one solvency ratio and compared the value of these ratios of banks with the median values in each banking sector. We will focus on banks from five financial conglomerates: Erste Group, KBC Group, Raiffeisen Bank International AG, Société Générale Group and UniCredit Group. All banks that belong to a financial conglomerate in Hungary are more solvent and mostly more liquid than other banks in the Hungarian banking sector. Banks from all analyzed groups held a higher buffer of liquid assets and mostly focus less on providing loans to non-bank customers. As the other results are mixed (for individual financial groups, individual countries, individual financial ratios), we cannot confirm that banks in a financial conglomerate are more or less liquid and solvent than other banks in the banking sector.