Sustainable Banking and Its Main Determinants – Evidence From the Serbian Banking Sector

Abstract

Throughout the past decade, sustainability has been one of the most important topics among academics and within the business community. The adoption of ESG practice and the creation of holistic business models is on the agenda of the entire financial industry, predominantly among banking and investment entities. The paper aims to analyse the regulatory framework and current practice of sustainable business models with respect to the most important international banks operating within the Serbian economy. The analysis encompasses the descriptive assessment of ESG regulations, the reporting framework in the sustainability domain, and the quantitative analysis of ESG metrics and their statistical relationship with banks’ financial performance. Due to various limitations, such as a lack of quantitative metrics and an unstandardized reporting practice, research was performed on a sample of four international banks operating in Serbia, for the period between the years 2015 and 2021. The statistical results of the regression analysis do not show a significant relationship between ESG metrics and the financial performance of the examined banks.