CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background of the Study

Risk Management is the identification assessment and prioritization of risks. It is the effect of uncertainty on objectives, whether positive or negative followed by coordinated and economic of application of resources to monitor and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities (Okeh, 2006).

The survival of every commercial bank depends on its ability to manage its risks and loans or advance portfolio effectively. However in the recent past, commercial banks in Nigeria witnessed rising non-performing credit portfolios and these significantly contributed to the financial distress in the banking sector.

Financial organization need to manage the credit risk inherent in the entire portfolio as well as the risk in individual credit or transaction. This is so because the survival and ability of financial institution to compete depend on their ability to profitability and manage credit risk. This is the reasons why lending is based on the two fundamental products of banking: money and information. Banks obtain these products from customers themselves by offering customer valuable services. They package money and information about their borrowers together with valuable banking services to create loan agreements and sell the loan agreements back to their customers (Hempel and Simonson, 2007).

As such, risk rating system in financial institution contains both objective and subjective elements. Objective aspect are based on financial statements and application of certain financial ratio that reflect liquidity, leverage and earnings. Despite the requirement that risk be quantified, risk rating systems always have a subjective dimension that attempts to capture intangibles such as the quality of management, the borrower’s status within the industry, and the quality of financial reporting. These subjective items may result in inconsistencies.

It is in this regard that many financial institutions have faced difficulties over the years arising from their inability to effectively manage credit risk. As such the major cause of serious banking problems continues to be directly related to tax credit standard for borrowers and counterparties, poor portfolio risk management, or lack of attention lead to a deterioration in the credit standard of a bank’s counterparties.

Hence, the need to investigate the subject matter of this research becomes imperative.