FACTORS INFLUENCING FINTECH EXPENDITURE IN SELECTED NIGERIAN DEPOSITS MONEY BANKS

In the last decades, financial markets and the economy have been experiencing an explosion of innovation and technologies modifying financial services and products, especially banking services. In the context of Nigeria's banking sector, previous studies centered around financial technology (FinTech) deployment whereas the current study focused on the critical issues surrounding the determinants of fintech expenditure and its consequential impact on the profitability listed deposit money banks (NDMBs). Primary and secondary data were used for the study. Primary data were collected through a well-structured questionnaire. Secondary data were extracted from abridge annual reports of selected NDMBs for the period 2008 to 2023. The population of the study according to the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) 2023 consists of 14 NDMBs out of which 9 were selected. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive, inferential statistics, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and panel regression analysis. Descriptive statistics of frequency and percentage were used to analyse the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents while inferential statistics such as ANOVA was used to evaluate factors influencing fintech expenditure in NDMBs. The results of descriptive analysis revealed the specific factors influencing fintech expenditure in NDMBs as extracted from the distributed copies of questionnaire. The factors include Cost of fintech infrastructure (COF) (75%), Cost of Software acquisition (COS) (65.38%), Maintenance cost (MC) (52.41%) and Bank size (BS) (78.51%). Based on the summary of findings of this study, it was concluded that the there is a significant difference in the factors influencing fintech expenditure in NDMBs. Therefore, the study recommends that NDMBs should carefully plan their fintech investments to balance the immediate costs with long-term benefits.