Is financial innovation a still relevant issue?

In this study we investigate the effects of financial innovation on performance and asset growth for a sample of EU large banks. The novel contribution of this study is the use of a unique dataset that identifies banks’ attitude towards innovation across time and the level of information conveyed to market participants in order to addresses two main questions. Firstly, whether financial innovation has still an important role to play in the decisional processes of European banks; secondly, which areas are involved and what the implications are for management processes. To provide answers to these questions we analysed the annual reports from a sample of European banks searching for indications of product and process innovations. First of all, our analysis reveals that sample banks show differing attitude towards innovation. On this basis we were able to draw up an initial ranking of banks both in terms of their interest for innovation and its pervasiveness. In parallel, in order to provide an answer to the second question, we sought to identify the areas of banks’ products and services or management in which innovation is most significant. It should be noted that studying corporate- culture via text analyses is a relatively recent area of research. It has, however, provided us with interesting results, particularly in the areas of organisation, market reporting and the presentation of strategies adopted and performances/results achieved. In the light of these insights, the same approach has been adopted in the present study regarding the subject of innovation. We then investigated possible links between the strategic importance of innovation and company performance.