Digitalization and banks' efficiency: Evidence from a European analysis

This paper firstly investigates the impact of digitalisation on bank efficiency and then analyses potential non-linearities in this relationship, as well as the possible moderating role played by bank business models, covering a sample of European banks over the period 2006-2021. Our results suggest that IT investments improve bank efficiency - more on the profit side than on the cost side –but that this interplay has an inverted U-shape, which indicates that excessive investment in IT technologies may be detrimental to both profit and cost efficiency. Moreover, the empirical findings show that the digitalisation-efficiency linkage is sensitive to the business model adopted by banks; in particular, retail-oriented banks benefit more from digitalisation compared to those that are market-oriented. The overall results, including those countries where digitalisation is overall low, are consistent across different robustness tests and model specifications. This study could be helpful in guiding a cognisant digital transition for European banks.