۱- Introduction

۲- Literature review and hypothesis development

۳- Data and summary statistics

۴- Econometric model

۵- Summary and conclusion

References

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of board characteristics on MFIs performance in Nigeria. A specific country study is warranted given the results from pooled cross-country studies may be biased owing to a failure to control for country differences. It is also particularly challenging to generalize the outcome of these results into a specific country given that many factors about MFIs, ranging from the nature of governance, legal status, size and prudential regulations, are not similar across countries.

Design/methodology/approach: The relationship between board characteristics and microfinance banks performance in Nigeria is tested using a sample of 120 firm-year observations covering 30 MFIs in the periods from 2010 to 2013. The study extracted all microfinance-level data from the Microfinance Information Exchange database.

Findings: The authors document a positive and significant relationship between board size and MFIs performance. The authors also find negative relation between female directors and MFIs performance, but not significant. The results suggest that larger board size indicates good corporate governance practice, which leads to reduced agency cost.

Introduction

Microfinance today is a major industry that comprise of thousands of institutions serving around 155m clients worldwide (Armendáriz and Morduch, 2010). In its modern form, microfinance is a tool that provides sustainable financial services to populations typically excluded by mainstream banking institutions (Yunus, 2007). Nevertheless, microfinance still reaches only a fraction of the world’s poor (Christen et al., 2004). Many studies have attributed lower outreach to lack of strong and sustainable microfinance institutions (MFIs) (Helms, 2006). Recent evidence suggests that governance forms a major obstacle to MFI growth and sustainability (CSFI, 2008; Strøm et al., 2014). Good governance can go a long way in preparing an MFI to better handle the risks that are inherently part of managing an MFI. This is because risk taking is at the heart of microfinance business and the board of directors is ultimately responsible for the level of risk assumed by the institutions (Di Benedetta et al., 2015). The corporate governance has assumed increasing importance in the Nigerian microfinance sector over the last few years. This attention is mainly driven by the promulgation of microfinance policy, regulatory and supervisory framework and the code of corporate governance for other financial institutions by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Consistent with the agency theory assumptions (Fama and Jensen, 1983; Jensen, 1986), these regulatory guidelines ensure high ethical conduct, and provide minimum acceptable governance standard that can reduce agency problems and improve MFIs performance. Unlike other jurisdictions, the guideline prescribes the board structure of MFIs, for instance, the minimum and maximum number of board of directors is prescribed based on MFIs category. However, the impact of governance structure on MFIs performance under this regulatory regime is not yet subject of investigation. Therefore, it is unwise to generalize the findings of cross-country studies.