Ethics in Banks’ Publicly Accessible Documents: The Case of Slovenia

Abstract

The article focuses on ethics being mentioned and addressed to in banks’ publicly accessible documents in Slovenian banking system. Authors in the first part deal with the question, whether a bank as a financial institution can be ethical as such, taking the responsibility for formation and development in the recent financial crisis into consideration. However, ethics in banking refers to ethical behaviour and activities at all levels of banking operations: from back office to front office, bank’s policies and strategies, and nevertheless, banks’ influence and involvement in the community. Such banks provide financing for projects and scholarships, sponsor events, promote environmental protection and similar activities described as socially responsible banking. Socially responsible banks can by all means act ethically. Our research is geographically wise limited to the banking system of Slovenia and content wise by looking merely into the fact whether or not ethics and ethical principles are present in Slovenian banking system and being a subject of banks’ reporting. We do not place a judgment about individual bank or banking system behaviour regarding ethics. The research is fully based on the presumption that information held in annual reports and other publicly accessible sources are correct and honest. In that context we set and tested two hypotheses. First (H1), being divided into two sub hypotheses, deals with the presence of ethics and ethical activities (H1a) and definition of ethical bank behaviour in banks’ publicly accessible documents (H2a) and second (H2) tests, whether banks in Slovenian banking system have ethical codes. We have accepted H1a and H2 and partly accepted H1b.