PERFORMANCE OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN INDIA IN THE REFORM ERA: AN OVEVIEW.

ABSTRACT The banking industry has traversed a long way since independence and planning initiatives in India. The entire banking landscape has undergone massive transformation. The banking sector has witnessed various phases of growth and progress over time, right from nationalization, structural and financial reforms, deregulation, consolidation, technology revolution and now digitalization. While in India, there is too much emphasis on the social responsibility of banks, the significance of banks’ profitability cannot be neglected. Financial viability and soundness of the banking system is crucial for long-run sustainability of banks and for enabling them to perform their duties towards fulfilling the social objective. In this perspective, the broad objective of the study is to measure, examine and compare the relative performance of three scheduled commercial bank groups (public sector banks, private sector banks, foreign banks) on the basis of parameters as – Productivity, Profitability and Liquidity. Ratio analysis has been employed to measure the performance of bank groups in India for the post global economic crisis period from 2010 to 2017. The performance analysis accomplished in the study reveals that the foreign banks have been leading the industry at the productivity front. In case of profitability, private sector banks as well as foreign banks have shown outstanding performance. The liquidity position of foreign banks reflects that they hold high quantum of liquid assets to total assets and to total deposits, yet their current ratio is poor indicating noncompliance of standard prudential measures.