The factors that affects the profitability of conventional and participation banks in Turkey

Financial sector is one of the important elements of the economy which helps to increase the performance of the economy and/or helps to reach the economy to its potential. It has an important duty to provide the funding for emerging economies such as Turkey. Banking is the biggest player in the financial sector and there are also plenty of different types of banks in the world. One of them is Islamic banking or participation banking. Islamic banking is a new system which was appeared in the 1960s. It is not only for Muslims but especially for them it is the only option if they want to obey the rules of Allah because Islamic banking covers the shariah laws. In Turkey first Islamic bank was founded in 1985 and at the moment there are 5 participation banks. The religion of Islam forbids several things which used in the financial sector. The first and the most important one is the interest because it can be said that the almost whole system was built on interest. On the other hand, Islamic banking uses the system of risk and reward. There is profit loss sharing which means depositors are like the shareholders and they can make a profit or loss. The profit is not certain. Other things that are forbidden are gambling, speculation and investment on haram businesses like drugs, alcohol and etc. As briefly explained above there is diversity between Islamic and conventional banks. It can be expected that these differences should affect the business as well as profit. So, economists study these two different types of banks and also their profits to find out whether there is a difference between them. It can be found that ROA, ROE and NIM are the profit variables which are used to measure the banking profitability in the literature. There are also multiple independent variables which are used to test the dependent variables. In this thesis, all three profit ratios are used in the model. Among multiple independent ones capital ratio, non-performing loan ratio, operational cost ratio, net fee commission ratio, the difference of deposit rates between the bank and the sector, market concentration, interest, financial deepening and liquidity ratio are used in the model. There are different types of models to determine the profitability of the banks in the literature. The "generalized methods of moments" (GMM) methodology is one of them and is used in this thesis because there are some problems within the variables like heteroskedasticity, endogeneity and auto correlation. GMM helps to correct all these problems. This thesis analyzes and compares the dynamics for the profitability of conventional banks and participation banks in Turkey between 2007 and 2017 using a sample of 3 Islamic and 21 conventional banks. The data was taken from independent auditor'sxx report of banks, Turkish Statistical Institute, Central Bank of Turkey, Reuters and Bloomberg. To figure out the factors and differences which affects the profitability, all the estimations are made separately and also jointly for all of the dependent variables. First of all, when we compare the mean values of two types of banks there are significant differences between them at almost all variables. There is significantly no difference only at NIM value. So, it can be said that the differences in the business model may be the cause of the difference in the ratio of the banks. In detail, ROA and ROE of the participation banks are higher than conventional ones which show participation banks are more profitable in general. But when we look at the commission fee income ratios, conventional banks are better. The comparison of the deposit interest/profit share rates of the banks shows that participation banks pay less than conventional banks. Which may be the result of the religious people who keep their deposits within the participation banks no matter what the rate is. Furthermore, the estimation results of the profitability ratios show other and the important differences as well as the important factors that affect the profitability. For conventional banks, it can be said that the lagged dependent variable, capital, net fee commission ratio, market concentration and financial deepening are the significant and positive variables as expected. The most influential one is the net fee commission income. The interest rate is also positive and significant for NIM. On the other hand, negative and significant variables are operational cost ratio and nonperforming loans ratio as expected.For participation banks, lagged dependent variable, capital, market concentration and financial deepening are positive significant variables while operating costs and non-performing loans are negative. To estimate NIM liquidity ratio is used because liquid assets' ratios are lower because they are less risky and shortterm and it should affect the NIM. Estimation results show that liquidity ratio negative and significant for NIM for both conventional and participation banks. Finally, estimation results for both of them together result in almost same outcome. The only difference is the deposit rate of banks. In detail, net fee commission ratio is very important for conventional banks because of the highly competitive banking sector. It can be said that banks should try to increase commission income which makes an important difference on the profit side. It is hard to give less deposit rate to customers and offer high loan rates. Customers can easily reach other banks. Because of high information and advertising on the banking sector, they can know which bank has more advantage than the others. Participation banks are far away from the maximum point of some conventional banks due to the fact that they can not claim all the commissions because they are interest related. However, they should find a way to collect more of it. Other important factor is the deposit rate of the banks. The highest expense of the banks are interest expenditures especially deposit interest expenses. So, lower the deposit rate lower the expenses. But for Turkey, this can not be the fact because of several reasons. First, the saving ratio is not sufficient for the economy and the loans that the economy needs. So, all the banks need to fund itself from abroad which is more expensive than giving high deposit rates inside the country. Secondly, if a bank can obtain more customers, it can make income from their businesses such as FX income, EFT income, banking operations income etc. If a bank does not have the sticky customers who keep their deposits without looking the rates, it should try to compete with other banks by giving higher rates. Finally, although the maximum profit rate point of the conventional banks are higher than participation banks, participation banks have not made a single loss for this period of time. One of the findings of the literature is that Islamic banks perform better on the crisis. The period between 2007 and 2017 contains a global crisis which affects the economy of Turkey as well as the banks. In 2008, some of the conventional banks made huge losses while participation banks still made profits. So, it can be said that the business cycle of the Islamic bankings yields to profits even if it is a crisis. The same thing is valid for the participation banks of Turkey.