Clustering of member banks of Iran's capital market based on credit risk and indicators affecting financial performance using the support vector regression approach

Monetary and financial institutions play an essential role in the economic development of any country. Financial systems can make an economy more productive by concentrating scarce resources and funds for massive investments. Examining the bank's financial performance and creating a suitable clustering system based on indicators that affect the financial performance of banks is of great importance for bank supervisors, bank depositors and shareholders, and banking sector policymakers. In the current research, the clustering of the member banks of Iran's capital market is done based on credit risk and indicators affecting financial performance using data from the period of 2009 to 2021 related to eleven selected banks of Iran's capital market and the support vector regression (SVR) model. Two measures of return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) have been implemented and analyzed as indicators of the bank's financial performance. For this purpose, the coefficients of the banks were first extracted using the support vector regression model and then clustered with these coefficients using the average linkage method. The results indicate that the clustering of banks using both financial performance measures is similar. Based on this, in the clustering with three clusters, Saderat, Mellat, Parsian, Postbank, Pasargad, Sina, Saman, Ekhztannovin and Karabhan banks are placed in one cluster and trade and capital banks are placed in other clusters. In the clustering with four clusters, Saderat, Mellat, Parsian, Pasargad, Sina, Saman, Ekhztannovin and Karabhan banks are in one cluster and Postbank, Trade and Capital banks are in other clusters. In the clustering with five clusters according to the data of the examined banks, Saderat, Mellat, Parsian, Sina, Saman and Ekhtaznovin banks are in one cluster (category), Pasargad and Karabehan banks are in the second cluster, and Postbank, Capital and Tejarat banks are in other clusters.