The impact of board composition on financial performance of commercial banks in Malaysia

Corporate governance refers to the set of rules, policies, and practices that a company uses to guide and regulate its operations. This study adds to the body of knowledge on corporate governance by performing the empirical analysis on the impact of board composition on bank financial performance in the context of the Malaysian market. Various determinants have been identified to analyze the impact of board composition and bank performance as measured by return on assets (ROA), namely board independence, board diversity, and board size. The involvement of firm age, size, growth, and leverage as moderators are recognized in the relationship between board composition determinants and bank financial performance.
To examine the relationships of these variables with bank performance, the study collected the data from 26 samples of commercial banks listed on Bank Negara Malaysia over the period of 2016 to 2020. The dataset used from secondary sources and extracted from the banks' published annual reports and corporate governance reports. The study performed descriptive statistics, multiple regression and correlation to analyze the impact of these relationships. The findings of the research revealed that the proportion of independent directors on the board, board diversity, the board size, and bank financial performance metrics have no significant relationships. As a result of this research, it appeared that board composition has little bearing on the success of Malaysia's bank performance.