Analysis of the effect of inflation on the profitability of Commercial Banks in Uganda. Case study: Stanbic Bank Uganda

Abstract

This study was undertaken to establish a relationship between the annual inflation rate and the profitability of commercial banks and the case study was taken to Stanbic Bank Uganda (SBU). The research was guided by three research questions that is to say: i) to determine the relationship between return of assets and the inflation rates. ii) To determine the relationship between SBU customer deposits and the inflation rate. iii) To establish the relationship between profits and the inflation rate. The study adopted secondary data about inflation rate, SBU customer deposits, return of assets, and the profits of the bank. The data was analyzed using inferential statistics with the help of statistical package for social scientists (SPSS) program. The regression analysis results were presented in the tables and scatter plots plotted to establish the relationship between the variables. The first major findings was the positive relationship between inflation rate and the return of assets of the bank, as inflation levels rises, so did the bank’s return of assets. The regression analysis of the secondary data showed that inflation has a significant effect on SBU return of assets. The second major finding was that inflation has negative impact on the customer deposits. The third finding revealed that a rise in inflation leads to low bank profits of the bank. The study concludes that further research is needed to establish other major causes of fluctuations in the bank profits apart from inflation which this study has been able to look at.