Board Characteristics and Financial Performance of Listed Financial Institutions in Nigeria

The study investigates the relationship between board characteristics which include board size, board independence, board members’ qualifications, board commitment and firms’ performance. To accomplish the said objective, this study used data extracted from the annual reports of 48 listed financial institutions from 2013 to 2017. The study quantitative as firm performance is measured using return on asset, while Generalised Least Square regression was employed due to presence of heteroscedasticity in the model to test the hypotheses of the study after all conditions for panel data regression is achieved. The finding reveals that only board size has significant positive impact on financial institutions’ performance individually; but collectively, board size, board independence, board qualifications and board commitment all have influence on the performance of financial institutions in Nigeria. The study therefore recommends that board characteristics should be assessed jointly and collectively in order to improve performance of financial institutions in Nigeria. This is because the variables can only improve the performance collectively provided the firms want to perform better.