Biometric analysis on financial performance of banks: key drivers of market, management and investors decisions

This study aims to identify the trends of banks’ financial performance over decades of publications using a bibliometric approach. The bibliometric method is used to analyze a total of 1390 articles published from 1970 to 2023. Descriptive and network analyses were applied using VOSviewer software to visualize the results. The most popular keywords were ‘financial performance’ and ‘banks’ which represent the primary study areas and topics. The most common techniques used in the analysis reported in previous studies are Data Envelopment Analysis and Generalized Method of Moments. This study contributes to earlier research on bank financial performance and offers insightful information on the trends and positions of banks as reported by productive articles and highlights diverse global contributions to financial research, with notable dominance from the United States and the United Kingdom in terms of publications and citations. It emphasizes the unique role of emerging markets and Islamic finance, presenting resilience during crises and varied approaches. These results suggest that publications on financial performance on a global scale may hold one of the key indicators for a bank’s financial position in the market, which could be valuable information for stakeholders and investors for decision-making. Meanwhile, academics and students can use the recommendations and suggestion in future research.