Effect of Market Discipline on Financial Performance of Commercial Banks in Kenya

Abstract

Commercial banks practicing improved information disclosure in their annual reports have recorded better performance. However, despite the mitigating efforts by the central bank of Kenya, commercial banks have recorded a decline in performance as shown by reduction in average return on assets over the period of study, that is; 4.7% in 2013, 3.4% in 2014, 2.9% in 2015, 3.3% in 2016, 2.7% in 2017, 2.7% in 2018, 2.6% in 2019 and 1.7% in 2020. The study sought to establish the effect of market discipline on performance of commercial banks in Kenya. Causal research design was employed. The target population included 38 commercial banks operating in Kenya between 2013-2020. Secondary panel data was collected from the banking supervision and individual bank’s published annual reports. Data analysis involved descriptive statistical analysis so as to determine the trend of the study variables while linear regression was used to test the relationship between market discipline and financial performance. The decision whether to fit a random or fixed effects model was determined after running Hausman specification test. Findings of the study were presented using tables while hypotheses were tested at 0.05 significance level. The study found out that market discipline insignificantly influenced financial performance of commercial banks in Kenya. The study recommends, that the managers of commercial banks should ensure that they strictly adhere to the regulations on information disclosure set by the central bank of Kenya in order to enhance their financial performance in the long run although the influence was not significant