Corporate Social Responsibility of the Romanian Banking Sector During the COVID-19 Crisis: Customers’ Perceptions and Financial Implications

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially transformed the individuals’ lives, affecting various industries and accelerating digitalization in almost all activity fields. The paper presents the way in which the banking sector has adjusted the financial services features in order to help the community during the health crisis, shaping the main opportunities offered by the new COVID-19 context for the Romanian banking sector. In the same time, the paper aims to analyze the clients’ perceptions of the banks’ CSR actions during COVID-19 crisis, suggesting the supportive role of the banks and the increased solidarity through digitalization. The customers’ expectations were addressed in correlation with a SWOT analysis applied to the most representative credit institutions by total assets. The investigation was based on a semi-structured questionnaire focused on the assessment of the CSR efforts of the banks to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, correlated with a SPSS analysis. According to the research findings, pandemic has redesigned the Romanian banking sector, being a primary starting point to rewrite the CSR strategies to improve the organizational resilience of banks. The main lines of investigation focused on how banks can cope with complex crisis by highlighting the features of the most resilient banks, expanding the use of digital banking and linking the banks’ CSR approach to clients’ demand for digital services after the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis.