“…They are the bank-specific factors such as bank size, liquidity, capital adequacy, interest income, ratio of loan loss provision over total loans, equity over total assets, the ratio of noninterest income over gross revenue, total deposits to total assets, etc. (Garcia and Guerreiro, 2016;Tan, 2016;Menicucci and Paolucci, 2016;Al-Homaidi et al, 2020). On the other hand, the external factors are those that reflect the economic and legal environments where banks operate (Sufian and Chong, 2008).…”