The Impact of Ownership Structure on Credit Risk of Commercial Banks: An Empirical Study in Vietnam

This study aims to assess the impact of ownership structure of commercial banks on bank credit risk in Vietnam. The authors used the unbalanced table data of 28 commercial banks in the period from 2004 to 2020 with 439 observations. The ratio of loan loss provisioning to loans (CR) is selected as a dependent variable representing credit risk at commercial banks. The regression methods used include: least squares method (OLS), fixed-effect model (FEM), random-effect model (REM) and general least squares method (GLS). The results reveal that, with interaction variable between the ratio of equity to total assets and foreign ownership, the national GDP annual growth rate is negatively associated with credit risk. With the ratio of equity to total assets, the interaction variable between equity and state ownership, and bank size have a significant positive impact on credit risk. In addition, inflation has negligible impact on the credit risk of commercial banks in Vietnam over the research period. The findings of this study suggest that, if foreign-owned banks increase equity capital, there will be a stronger impact on reducing credit risk than other banks. On the other hand, when state-owned commercial banks in Vietnam increase equity, they will have higher credit risk.