Compliance with Regulations: Path to Adequate Corporate Governance in the Nigerian Banking Industry for Business Sustainability and Enhanced Financial Performance

Compliance with regulations remained a significant impediment in the financial industry globally, especially in the Nigerian Banking Industry. Corporate governance is obligatory, but adherence to rules is a puzzle in the banking industry, which has impacted on the investors and financial performance considering fines and penalties incurred by the banks where sanctioned. Regardless, compliance issues are global, and regulation needs improved regulatory momentum in the Nigeria financial sector to ensure no ambiguities in the rules of law for its useful understanding and implementation. Consequently, in the current global market, compliance is the only language to fortify the financial industry from any future collapse due to the disposition of the corporate financial leader to their business and codes of corporate governance. The purpose of this qualitative exploratory multiple case study was to explore compliance mitigants corporate financial leaders need to implement to ensure adherence to regulations to enhance business sustainability and organizational financial performance. The banking industry is one of the pillars of the economy; however, in Nigeria, average depositors feared the bank due to the constant failure of the banks. So, the importance of this paper is to contribute to the issue of compliance and its management to avoid an impending collapse in the industry. The sample for this study was 18 corporate financial leaders and regulators with at the least ten (10) years of banking and regulatory experience at the top management level involved in strategic positions with a varied portfolio in the banking industry in Nigeria. The Agency theory served as the conceptual framework for the study. Data collection included semi-structured face to face interviews and review of circulars and policies issued by regulators and internal policies of the banks. Data were transcribed, analyzed, and validated using member checking and triangulation. The Participant signed an informed consent form before the commencement of the data collection. The finding revealed that compliance is improving in the Nigerian financial industry. However, there are still issues of noncompliance and problems related to conflict of interest until 2018 which affects the financial performance of the banks on the long run and may lead to financial distress supported by Agency theory as the conceptual framework. The regulators may use the findings to improve on their supervisory, monitoring strategy and guard ambiguity in regulations to ensure that corporate financial leaders are not just complying with the part of the code they are comfortable with but all aspect of the codes of corporate governance and the implementation in alignment with best practices globally. The corporate financial leaders may use the findings to curb the strategies that could impact on their business to the point of collapse and imbibe the spirit of the code to ensure the company adhered to regulations for sustainability and going concern of the company to enhance their financial performance for improved reputation to attract potential investors.