Alla S. Navolokina

The article substantiates aspects that are fundamental for the economic justification of the bank selection by enterprises as the main stage in the partnership formation. It also defines the development of a bank selection procedure taking into account the financial parameters and innovative orientation of banks.
The proposed procedure for selecting banks includes two blocks. The first block is the comparison of banks in terms of reliability, which is determined based on indicators for assessing their financial risks and confidence of enterprises. The second block is the comparison of the most reliable banks according to the operational capabilities of Internet banking systems (in terms of functionality) and the intensity of promotion of innovative products and services that meet the needs of enterprises.
The proposed bank selection procedure is mainly based on applying the classification functions that allow the reliability-based differentiation as well as comparison of banks. The proposals submitted with the aim to develop classification functions, as well as the bank selection procedure as a whole, were tested based on the financial statements and general information on the Ukrainian banks’ activity as of January 1, 2019. The following results were obtained while testing the developed procedure: It defines the features specific to dividing the analyzed Ukrainian banks into groups (70% are high-reliability banks, 7% are medium-reliability banks, and 23% are low-reliability banks). It also highlights the fact that reliable banks are focused on innovating and developing remote services for their business clients.

Stakeholder theory dominates in revealing the features of the stakeholders’ influence on various entities; however, only few studies rely on it in the field of enterprises that select banks as financial partners. Considering the enterprise-bank relationship from the stakeholder theory perspective, this paper represents an approach to selecting strategies for interaction with this stakeholder type.
The proposed approach includes the following steps: determining the interaction objectives for enterprises and banks; specifying and comparing potential partners; ranking banks to justify the chosen partner/partners for interaction; and selecting interaction strategies and forming the content of the behavior patterns inherent in enterprises (offensive or negotiation strategies). The criteria for choosing a strategy include the objectives of the interaction between enterprises (providing comprehensive services or satisfying individual financial needs) and their financial status that determines the interest of banks in partnership.
The application of the proposed methodology for calculating rating indicators and the respective bank ranking showed that 18% of the banks included in the studied list of reliable Ukrainian banks have a high level of innovation activity and an acceptable level of banking service costs for business customers (that is, they implement a customer-oriented policy). Therefore, to receive comprehensive banking services combined with high or medium levels of banks’ interest in interaction, the paper recommends enterprises to choose a large-scale offensive strategy or a large-scale negotiation strategy, respectively.
The stakeholder theory, as well as consideration of the criteria defined in the paper, will allow enterprises to choose interaction strategies that meet their needs for financial services and harmonize the interests of partners.