An empirical study on measuring efficiency and profitability of bank regions

When bank managers are asked to comment on the bank’s performance over the past year, most would quote either their bank’s return on equity or return on assets. If these measures were higher than those of their peers, the bank is referred to as a high‐performance bank. The ratios involved are financial ratios and the main problem with this approach is its reliance on comparable ratios. To find suitable comparable standards (norms) is quite difficult, and when the standard (norm) is not appropriate, the comparison may mislead the analyst. A measurement tool that can compensate for the weaknesses in financial ratios is therefore needed. One such tool that can be used to measure bank performance is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The objective of this article is to draw a comparison between the results of financial ratios (as a conventional performance measurement) and the results obtained by means of DEA with regard to the performance evaluation of the ten regional offices of one of South Africa’s larger banks.