Detection of Dissimilarity Among Different Indian Banks: An MDS Approach

This paper addresses the aspect of detection of dissimilarity (in terms of 10 performance indicators) existing among major Indian banks. Towards attainment of the goal the wellknown Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) approach has been employed. The interesting outcome of the paper is that the MDS technique is capable of discerning the dissimilarity (in relative terms) existing in the overall performance behavior (based on a number of relevant performance parameters) in the case of 37 leading Indian banks during the period 2004-05 to 2013-14 based on data obtained on yearly basis for this purpose. The dynamics of the overall performance behavior over time (year after year) during the above-mentioned period with respect to the parameters studied has been obtained. MDS analysis reveals that the four banks — SBI, ICICI, AXIS and PNB — differ significantly from the other 33 banks in each year in the mentioned period. Thus, MDS approach brings out an important feature related to inter-banks’ differentiating status where a comparison of different banks is performed with the help of several attributes or performance indicators. In the introduction section, an exhaustive and interesting review of the major research works undertaken on the performance of Indian banks (available in literature as surveyed by us) has been presented.