THE ASSESSMENT OF THE SITUATION IN BANKING SECTORS IN SELECTED EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

The economic significance of the banking sector is well recognized in the theory and practice. In the literature there are discussed various topics concerning banking: banking sectors stability and its determinants, as well as influence of the banking sector on other sectors of the economy. Moreover the situation in the banking sector has been studied from different perspectives: its stability, profitability, efficiency, competition, concentration. A special part of literature is related to economies in transition. Therefore aim of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of the financial standing of the banking sectors in selected countries of the Western Balkans, i.e. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Croatia, and current Baltic States (former republics of the USSR), i.e. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, few years after the financial crisis. Thanks to the use of the CAMELS method it is possible to check which banking sectors are in better shape: these which are only at the initial stage of transformation of the banking sectors or these where the transformation of this sector has been already completed. The data was collected from International Monetary Fund covering the period of five years 2010–2015, on quarterly basis