The effect of risk management committee characteristics and board financial expertise on the financial performance of quoted banks in Nigeria

The issue revolving around corporate governance and financial performance has always been an essential and critical element for banking sector in Nigeria. This study investigates the effect of risk management committee characteristics (risk management committee size and risk management committee independence) and board financial expertise on the financial performance of quoted banks in Nigeria. The research used secondary data obtained from the annual report of banks listed in the Nigerian Stock exchange for the year 2013-2016 with 56 firm-year observations and based on panel data approach. Furthermore, the regression estimates are based on random effect and Fixed effect models. The result indicates that risk management committee size and risk management committee independence have insignificant relationship with financial performance of ROA, ROE and Tobin’s Q. This means an increase or decrease in risk management committee size has no effect on financial performance. Board financial expertise exhibit a negative relationship with ROA and ROE. This revealed that the more the financial expert in an organization the less is financial performance. This is because of the risk that will be avoided. Besides, providing suggestion for future research work, this study provides several recommendations for regulators and the Nigerian banking industry. The findings of the study would give invaluable insight to the stock market, government, auditing and accounting regulators and auditing and accounting professional bodies, as to what extent codes of corporate governance regulators and laws are implemented by the banks and other financial services.