Impact of Liquidity on Profitability: A Study on the Commercial Banks in Bangladesh

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the effect of banks' liquidity on its profitability; with the ordinary course of business and in the medium term (10 years). A quantitative analysis is performed on a statistical sample of forty (40) commercial banks in Bangladesh. Secondary data is used to evaluate the performance of the last ten years (2009-2018) of the annual report of the commercial banks in Bangladesh with 206 bank years of data gathered to consider all Bangladeshi commercial banks. Proposed variables are: LDR, DAR, CDR, LAR and CR as liquidity representation; on the other hand, ROE is the profitability representation. Five hypotheses have been established to assess the effect of liquidity on profitability. Following a correlation and regression analysis, it is observed that LDR, DAR and CDR had a substantial effect on the profitability measured as ROE, but LAR and CR proved insignificant. Therefore, it can be concluded that, in general, the impact of liquidity has a significant effect on the profitability in the commercial banking sector of Bangladesh. By relying on this report; Bangladeshi banks will be best positioned to keep equality between its liquidity and profitability. Keywords: Liquidity, Profitability, ROE, Commercial Banks