Financial Resilience of Post-Pandemic Indonesia’s Largest Banks: Evidence from Camels and RGEC-Based Assessment

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted Indonesia's banking sector, particularly increasing credit risk and pressuring financial stability. This study aims to assess the financial resilience of Indonesia's largest banks—specifically those categorized as Core Capital Bank Tier-4 (BCA, Mandiri, BRI, and BNI)—over the 2019–2023 period, covering the pre-pandemic, during-pandemic, and post-pandemic recovery stages. Using a quantitative approach and secondary data from audited financial reports, the study employs two established bank health assessment methods: CAMELS (Capital, Assets, Management, Earnings, Liquidity, and Sensitivity to Market Risk) and RGEC (Risk Profile, Good Corporate Governance, Earnings, and Capital). The results reveal that all four banks demonstrated strong capital adequacy, with BCA recording the highest average Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) of 26.1%. Asset quality, measured by Non-Performing Loans (NPL), showed BCA with the lowest average NPL (1.8%), while others remained in the healthy category. The pandemic caused notable declines in key indicators such as Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), Net Interest Margin (NIM), and Loan-to-Deposit Ratio (LDR) in 2020, followed by a consistent recovery from 2021 to 2023. The RGEC method consistently rated all banks as “Very Healthy” throughout the period, whereas the CAMELS method showed more variation—initially rating BCA as “Healthy” and others as “Fairly Healthy” in 2019–2020, before all banks improved to “Healthy” by 2021–2023. The study concludes that Indonesia's Core Capital Bank Tier-4 banks possess strong financial resilience, adequate governance, and robust adaptability to economic shocks. Recommendations include strengthening credit risk management, enhancing operational efficiency, and expanding future research to include macroeconomic variables and broader bank classifications.

Financial resilience, Bank health assessment, CAMELS method, RGEC method, Post-pandemic recovery

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