Dividends and risks in banks : An investigation of a relationship between dividends and risks in Nordic banks

Sammanfattning: Banks represent one of the most important parts of the economy in the world. As a result, decisions of bank management affect not just the direct bank stakeholders but the state of the economy and society as a whole. This became evident during the latest financial crisis in 2007 where the failure of one bank resulted in the domino falling that affected banks globally. The regulators increase their attention to the risks that bank face and their measures and requirements. Therefore, the research within the banking area has important consequences from both theoretical and practical side.   The purpose of this project is to investigate whether there is a relationship between dividends that Nordic banks pay and different types of risks such as market, credit (including default), liquidity and operational. The results of the research will contribute to the knowledge in finance and help different stakeholders to understand possible reasons for different dividends level.   The methodological position works as a foundation for the conduction of the research. The epistemological and ontological views applied in this project are positivism and objectivism. The deductive research approach and quantitative research strategy are used for the research and thus the collection and analysis of the archival data of 19 Nordic banks over five year time horizon. The research can therefore be described as a panel study.   Based on the previous research papers the following proxies for risks have been used in the research: market risk – capital requirement for market risk to total assets, credit risk – loan loss provisions to total assets, default risk – Altman Z-score, liquidity risk –liquidity coverage ratio, operational risk – economic capital (capital requirement) for operational risk to total asset.   Ordinary Least Square regression analysis is performed over the collected data in order to fulfil the purpose of the project. The tests results identify that there are no statistically significant relationship between dividends and market, credit, default and liquidity risks and the statistically significant negative relationship between the dividends and operational risk in Nordic banks. These findings contribute to a new knowledge within the finance and banking area in particular. Additionally, this project might be used as a foundation for the further research within the field. The findings are also useful for stakeholders in understanding banks risk level.