Financial system development progress in Western Balkans

Abstract

Financial system supports economic growth, while its regulatory framework provides stability for investors. Developing countries with bank-oriented financial systems are not attractive to investors, so prolonged status quo leads to economic deterioration. This is particularly the case with some of the most underdeveloped areas in Europe: Western Balkans. It is essential the developing countries in this region consider steps towards financial liberalization, which will help open the borders for capital flows and attract new investments. The main goal of this paper is to review and present the available information related to the banking system development in Western Balkans in terms of ownership structure, capital adequacy, loan and asset performance, return on investment and liquidity. These indicators should provide a clearer picture of the current financial systems in Western Balkans economies and their development progress -useful for comparison with other developing regions and financial transformation and liberalization efforts.

Enriching m-banking perceived value to achieve reuse intention

“…A substantial contribution of this study to the emerging yet still narrow body of research on the perceived value of m-banking services can be recognised in three main streams: (1) complementing the widely accepted utilitarian and hedonic perceived value duality with the epistemic value; (2) analysing the multipurpose smartphones through the value of the perceived entertainment (related to the hedonic value), m-banking ubiquity (related to the utilitarian value) and novelty seeking (related to the epistemic value); and, (3) exploring technological innovations in the frequently overlooked consumer market of the Western Balkan countries, where the implementation of the m-banking service is still in rather infancy stage. Accordingly, to the extent of the authors’ knowledge, there is no study that explores the actual m-banking usage in Macedonia or any other Balkan country, whereas the necessity for such research has been underlined (Kozarević et al , 2017).…”

“…Accordingly, m-banking usage tendencies still present a relative scarcity of knowledge about developing countries (Farah et al , 2018), yet so far the existing m-banking literature comes primarily from Asia or South Africa (Baptista and Oliveira, 2016). In line with this, it was highlighted the need for continuous monitoring of the banking system progress considering the latest financial crisis impact, especially underlining the importance of a closer look at the Western Balkan countries, as one of the least developed regions in Europe (Kozarević et al , 2017). Having in mind the aforementioned, the idea is to explore customers’ predisposition towards a continuous usage of m-banking in a developing market.…”

“…Having in mind the limited consideration of only Macedonians users of m-banking services, the generalisability of the results is confined. Given the similar social development of Balkan countries, such as Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina or Montenegro (Kozarević et al , 2017), for assuring widely conclusive results throughout the region, this same model could be replicated applying a random sampling method. Future research on greater market modernisation, strategic enterprise management and customer technology adoption, which could position Western Balkan closer to the global market and the desired European Union connection, will be enriching.…”

Why do customers value m-banking apps? A stimulus-organism-response perspective

“…Responding to the call for continuous analyses of the development of the banking system in the Western Balkans (Kozarevi c et al, 2017), this study contributes to expanding the limited knowledge on this topic. Referring to the identified lack of research on the postadoption phase (Tam and Oliveira, 2017), the present study examines the continuance intention to use m-banking services rather than analysing the initial adoption (Karjaluoto et al, 2019).…”