Bank holding company diversification and production efficiency

Abstract

Bank Holding Companies (BHCs) have been diversifying their businesses increasingly among banking, securities and insurance activities in the recent decades through establishment of Section 20 subsidiaries in earlier years and through formation of financial holding companies after the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA, 1999). This study examines whether BHC diversification is associated with improvement or detriment in its production efficiency. We apply the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to calculate the Malmquist index of productivity, and the total factor productivity change for a sample of BHCs over the period 1997–2007. Two main results are obtained. First, technical efficiency is negatively associated with activity diversification and the effect is primarily driven by BHCs that did not experience diversification through Section 20 subsidiaries. Second, the degree of change in diversification over time is not associated with total factor productivity change but it is negatively associated with technical e...