RISK MANAGEMENT DISCLOSURE IN LITHUANIAN COMMERCIAL BANKS FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

Abstract

Financial institutions have to follow International regulatory requirements and national regulations for risk management disclosure. International regulations are developed by Basel Committee of Banking Supervision (known as Basel II and Basel III) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS 7) introduced by International Accounting Standards Board. National requirements in Lithuanian are developed by Lithuanian central bank. Financial institutions, banks, are expected to provide timely and transparent information about risk exposures, correspondence to minimum regulatory requirements, risk computation methods etc. Still there are some questions raised how these de facto regulations are implemented in practice. The goal of empirical research was to investigate the extent of risk management disclosure in Lithuanian commercial banks financial statements. Data sample constituted of 7 commercial banks that are legally registered in Lithuania: AB “Swedbank”, AB “SEB”, AB “DNB”, AB “Citadele”, AB “Medicinos Bankas”, AB “Šiaulių bankas”, AB “Finasta”. The period of 2009 – 2013 was analysed. The content analysis as analytical tool was employed. Research criteria were divided into 5 major groups: general policy, capital adequacy, credit risk, market risk, and operational risk. In total 34 criterions were developed. Coding of text was performed by counting words for each criterion. Our evidence supports the conjecture that Lithuanian commercial banks provide more and more risk reporting. Also, we find that the extent of risk management disclosure is greater with the bigger size of reporting bank. Meanwhile, the extent for different risk management disclosure varies significantly: credit risk management is most reported risk. Further investigations on risk management disclosure in commercial banks should be focused on other reports first, such as annual reports or additional reports, which are provided by banks. Second, the sample of research is limited and in order to obtain more accurate results it is necessary to expand it. Moreover, authors did not examine liquidity risk, which could be relevant to the results, especially when Basel III accord is in the implementation stage. Third, counting unit can be changed from words to sentences, because sometimes separate words are meaningless and finally, future researches could be focused not only on extent of disclosed information, but also concentrate on the quality of provided information.