Analysis of the financial parameters of Serbian banks through the application of the fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS methods

Banks represent entities of the financial market and the overall system for financing of the economy, i.e. they are directly or indirectly becoming the drivers and control mechanism of the financial system without which the process of reproduction would be practically impossible. Banks, as specific financial institutions, hold a central place within the financial system due to the functions they perform, as well as the relative volume of financial potential that resides within their accounts. Evaluation of the work of banks is of essential importance to creditors, investors and other interested parties, because it determines a bank's ability to be competitive within the sector. The aim of this study is to propose a fuzzy multi-criteria model that will facilitate the assessment of the financial performance of banks. An analysis was performed of the entire banking sector in Serbia covering the period between the years 2005 and 2010. Methods such as the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and the Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) have been integrated into the proposed model. In the first phase, we determined the priority weights of criteria using FAHP, while in the second phase we performed a ranking of the banks through the application of the TOPSIS method.