6. Findings
The study sought to examine the effectiveness of internal control systems, explore the exposure of Spanish listed banks to default problems and establish the relationship between internal controls and credit risk. The effectiveness of internal controls is seen from the descriptive statistics. The mean values for control environment, risk assessment, control activities and monitoring are indications of attempt to make provision for effective internal control systems. There is high board independence, large board size, experienced management and high quality auditors. The study reveals that there is excessive desire to expand through over branching. This has serious implications for cost of maintaining branches and controlling activities. There is the tendency for head office to lose control in monitoring effectively what goes on in all branches at all times. When there is proliferation of bank branches in specific geographical areas, credit pollution through multiple borrowing is likely to occur since the same clients will receive duplicated credit services from different branches (Steinwand, 2000). The loan to deposit ratio of more than one (1) indicates that all deposits are absorbed by loans a situation which could trigger liquidity problems should there be any delay in the servicing of the loan. There is over-reliance on loans as the major asset component. This does not commensurate with the long years of existence and experience and expertise of board and management. Bank profitability intent is maintained within normal practice there is the need to compliment it with good banking practices in order to keep credit risk in control.
Variables like loans to deposit ratio debt to total asset ratio cast doubts on risk assessment function of top management and board. The encouraging figures for the characteristics of the board, management and auditors do not reflect the figures for monitoring, control environment, risk management, control activities and information and communication. This confirms Agrawal and Mandelker (1990) who emphasized board effectiveness and not necessarily board characteristics. The conditions created exposes Spanish banks to so much credit risk conditions. Risk taking decisions should be done upon careful risk assessment, measurement, implementation and evaluation. There was no evidence of reporting material internal control weakness and this seriously increases the risk exposure of banks.
The study finds very encouraging positive results for the independent variables. The results show that internal controls explain credit risk very much. The R-squared value indicates that 72% of variations in credit risk is attributable to internal controls. This can be found in Table 4. The result indicates that internal controls are capable of determining credit risk. The result confirms the works of Ashbaugh-Skaife et al. (2007) who found some association between internal controls and several risk measures like idiosyncratic risks and higher systematic risk. We find an improvement in the works of (Kim, Song & Zhang, 2011) who reported no relation