Financial soundness index for the private corporate sector in Colombia

Lemus-Esquivel, Juan Sebastián; Quicazán-Moreno, Carlos Andrés; Hurtado-Guarín, Jorge Luis; Lizarazo-Cuellar, Angélica María

Financial soundness index for the private corporate sector in Colombia

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Temas de Estabilidad Financiera ; No. 82

Date published

2015-11-07

Date

2015-07

Authors

Lemus-Esquivel, Juan Sebastián
Quicazán-Moreno, Carlos Andrés
Hurtado-Guarín, Jorge Luis
Lizarazo-Cuellar, Angélica María

Document language

eng

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Las opiniones contenidas en el presente documento son responsabilidad exclusiva de los autores y no comprometen al Banco de la República ni a su Junta Directiva.

The opinions contained in this document are the sole responsibility of the author and do not commit Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.

Abstract

This paper has as main objective to build a composite metric of financial soundness for the private corporate sector in Colombia. Instead of relying on the individual and sometimes restrictive financial ratio analysis approach, the purpose of this document is to provide a single metric aimed at measuring the financial health of firms. Said metric, the financial soundness index, is derived by employing the cross-section approach of principal component analysis. For the time period of 2000-2013, the results allow to identify which industries have a weak, strong or similar balance sheet performance relative to that observed for the private corporate sector as a whole. Furthermore for firms that are debtors of the Colombian financial system, validation tests on the index confirm the apparent relationship between accounting data and the credit risk perception of and materialization for financial intermediaries.