Factors influencing bank financial performance in ASEAN-5 with the mediating role of FinTech adoption

This study examines how AI-enabled risk analytics capability, digital leadership orientation, and regulatory support and clarity jointly shape bank financial performance in ASEAN-5, addressing a key gap in prior work that has typically treated technological, organizational, and regulatory enablers in isolation and rarely integrated the Technology-Organization-Environment framework with the Resource-Based View and Dynamic Capabilities Theory in an emerging, bank-based context. Using survey data from 385 banking professionals across ASEAN-5 and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling, the study models FinTech adoption as a mediating dynamic capability linking these enablers to performance. The results show that all three antecedents significantly enhance both FinTech adoption and bank financial performance, with adoption exerting the strongest direct effect and partially mediating each relationship. The study contributes by theorizing AI-enabled risk analytics and digital leadership as strategic resources whose value is amplified when embedded in supportive regulatory environments and operationalised through FinTech adoption. The findings imply that ASEAN banks can strengthen profitability and efficiency not by isolated technology investments, but by aligning AI capabilities, leadership agendas, and regulatory clarity around coherent digital adoption strategies, offering actionable insights for managers and regulators seeking to close digitalisation gaps while safeguarding performance.