Iranian Banking System

Economic Value Added, or EVA is one of the popular tools that bankers can use to measure the financial performance of their bank. EVA helps management to conduct internal goal-setting. The long-term goal is preferred than short-term implications. It measures the company’s financial performance based on the residual wealth calculated by deducting its cost of capital from its operating profit, adjusted for taxes on a cash basis. It helps to capture the real economic profit of a company. The main objective of this study is to examine the Iranian banks' financial performance based on EVA which is the modern concept introduced to evaluate the performance of banks. Data are collected for the study, which consisted annual reports of the banks from 2006 to 2017 (12 years). Private banks selected in this study were associated with increased non-performing loan to total loan, reduced capital adequacy, reduced profits and increased inefficiencies. All of these factors have led to reduction not only in the economic value of banks but also the negative EVA of selected banks. Banks are encouraged to identify unnecessary activities and reduce the cost of providing services to improve the economic value added of banks.

A healthy and profitable banking system can better withstand economic shocks and play a more effective role in the sustainability and stability of the financial system. The creation of this type of banking system is possible when all financial institutions operating in a country's money market are sound institutions and have appropriate financial indicators. The experience of the recent financial crisis and the devastating effects of transition the crisis from the monetary sector to the real sector of the economy have shown that it is necessary to pay more attention to the issue of banking health. Therefore, the main purpose of this article was to investigate the factors affecting the asset quality ratio of the country's banking system, as one of the main indicators of banking system soundness with the emphasis on business cycles, macroeconomic variables and banking variables in the time period between the years 2001 to 2018. The statistical population in the study was 29 banks operating in Iran. In this research, the dynamic panel model, system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) has been used to achieve the desired goals. The results show that business cycles have a significant negative correlation with the quality of assets in the banking system. Also, all macroeconomic and banking variables have a significant correlation with the ratio of asset quality in the banking system.