Liquidity Risk and Financial Performance of Commercial Banks in Kenya

Abstract

The focus of this study was to examine the effect of liquidity risk on financial performance of commercial banks in Kenya. The period of interest was between year 2005 and 2014 for all the 43 registered commercial banks in Kenya. Liquidity risk was measured by liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) and net stable funding ratio (NSFR) while financial performance by return on equity (ROE). Data was collected from commercial banks’ financial statements filed with the Central Bank of Kenya. Panel data techniques of random effects estimation and generalized method of moments (GMM) were used to purge time-invariant unobserved firm specific effects and to mitigate potential endogeneity problems. Pairwise correlations between the variables were carried out. Wald and F- tests were used to determine the significance of the regression while the coefficient of determination, within and between, was used to determine how much variation in dependent variable is explained by independent variables. Findings indicate that NSFR is negatively associated with bank profitability both in long run and short run while LCR does not significantly influence the financial performance of commercial banks in Kenya both in long run and short run. However, the overall effect was that liquidity risk has a negative effect on financial performance. It is therefore advisable for a bank’s management to pay the required attention to the liquidity management.