Assessing the Financial Returns of Human Capital Investment in Nigerian Banks: A GMM-Based Analysis

The study tries to assess the causal link between human capital investment through training and development of staff of Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria and their financial performance. Ex-post facto research design was adopted for the study where panel data extracted from the annual reports of nine (9) selected banks in Nigeria for the periods 2014 to 2021 were used. The dependent variable was financial performance measured with return on asset and earnings per share while the independent variable was training and development cost. Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) Model was used to test the two formulated hypotheses under E-views version 10. The findings showed that training and development cost has a positive and significant influence on both the return on assets and earnings per share of the selected DMBs in Nigeria. The study, therefore, concludes that human capital investment through training and development costs positively and significantly influences the financial performance of DMBs in Nigeria. The study recommends among others that more funds should be invested in the training and development of employees as this has been proven to have a positive and significant impact on the financial performance of the selected Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria.