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The purpose of this paper is to provide a bird's eye overview of the special issue and its significance.

The paper reviews relevant topics and provide perspective.

Critical areas and future focus are identified in the paper.

This work may stimulate future academic research and identify practical implementation challenges.

The paper provides perspective and impetus for future research.

Existing empirical evidence indicates internet banks worldwide have underperformed newly chartered traditional banks mainly because of their higher overhead costs. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of internet banking services on credit union activity.

The impact of internet banking services on credit union over the period 1999‐2006 was studied and regression equations were estimated for the growth in assets, operating expenses and return on assets as functions of portfolio characteristics, economic conditions and a dummy variable indicating if the credit union has adopted internet banking services.

The operating costs of credit unions providing web access were found to be significantly higher than those credit unions which do not have any web account offerings. There is increased growth in assets for the credit unions which have worldwide web accounts although this relationship is statistically significant in only three of the eight years studied. The return on assets show that the credit unions with web accounts have similar average profitability to those credit unions that do not provide the facility of internet access to their customers.

Consideration could be given to running the regressions with the number of years the web site has been in place instead of just a dummy variable and putting in common bond dummy variables. Some common bonds are so narrow it may not pay to have internet services.

Even though there are costs associated with providing internet services, the retention of profitability and the evidence of potentially higher asset growth rates suggest the importance of internet banking and the trend of internet banking adoption is expected to continue in the near future in the credit union industry.

This is a pioneering study on the effect of internet banking services on the costs, growth and profitability of Credit Unions in the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the causes behind the failures of virtual banks. This work underscores the importance of the differing financial metrics in the virtual and brick and mortar banking channels, when analyzing bank failures.

“Probit” analysis on the failed virtual banks and the failed brick and mortar banks revealed that the interest incomes in both banks are significantly different. The non‐interest income and non‐interest expense (NIE) of the surviving banks and the failed banks are explored to examine the causes for failure.

Similar to previous research it was found that the brick and mortar banks failed due to bad asset quality, but the failure of virtual banks is mainly due to high NIEs. For virtual banks to succeed, the institutions must focus on controlling the burden.

A larger sample size would have been preferable and non‐availability of data limited the scope of the study. Continuing studies could explore the performance of Internet channels of existing brick and mortar banks.

This study accentuates the importance of the differing business models underlying the two banking channels (virtual banks and brick and mortar banks). These channel specific differences underscore the significance of the financial metrics in operational evaluation.

This is probably the first study to examine the causes of failures of virtual banks and contrast them with brick and mortar banks.

The purpose of this paper is to recognize the benefits of the initial coin offering (ICO) as a way of raising funds and to present a detailed comparison between the ICO and the initial public offering to realize the future possibilities that this new funding method holds.

It is an exhaustive review of the ICO, the mechanism of crowdfunding, the blockchain technology behind it, benefits and current shortcomings of the ICO, and the potential future development of the ICO as a convenient and efficient way of raising capital.

ICOs have brought billions of dollars of funding to startups and projects worldwide in less than two years. Concurrently, many successful ICOs yielded extremely high returns to investors and believers of this new way of funding businesses.

While the ICO is a revolutionary vehicle for business funding, it has raised concerns among users as well as potential investors about its risk and lack of regulation. The future of this innovative funding method highly depends on further development and placement of appropriate regulatory supervision, better understanding of risk and benefits and attaining the confidence of users.

This is a review of the advantages and drawbacks of the ICO. If the current fraud, market and cybersecurity risks can be mitigated and standardized regulations are developed, the ICO has a future to become an established way of capital funding or even replace the existing options, regardless of the size and age of companies.

This study aims to explore the impact of board gender diversity on firms’ forward-looking risk, as perceived by both the firm’s management and its investors. The authors seek to understand whether the presence of female directors and the consequent enhancement of board dynamics can influence a firm’s risk profile.

The authors use firms’ cash holdings and option implied volatility as proxies for future risk. The approach involves a rigorous analysis that accounts for potential concerns related to selection bias, endogeneity, heteroskedasticity and serial correlation. The authors further substantiate the findings through robustness checks, including a dynamic panel system general method of moment test and a Heckman correction model.

The results reveal an inverse relationship between board gender diversity and firms’ expected risk. The findings suggest that the primary driver of this risk reduction is the improvement in the group dynamics of the board that comes with increased gender diversity. This implies that gender diverse boards can significantly influence a firm’s risk management and financial performance.

The results indicate that gender diverse firms have economically and statistically significantly less expected risk and have better financial performance than firms with less board gender diversity. This has important implications for the organization of corporate boards.

If the addition of female directors alters the risk aversion of the board, then management may be compelled to alter their investment and production decisions that, ultimately, affects firms’ profitability. In addition, the authors investigate whether changes to firm risk is due to gender differences in risk preferences or to an improvement in the group dynamics of the board.

The empirical results suggest that the effect of board gender diversity on firms’ expected risk and financial performance may be due to an improvement in the collective intelligence of the board, as a result of more gender diversity, and not due to gender differences in risk preferences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is the first to study the effect of board gender diversity on firms’ future risk.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the Digital Age on e-finance in five key areas: payment systems, cloud computing in financial services, valuation metrics for multisided platforms, quantum trading, cyber security – costs, benefits and protection.

It is an exhaustive review of technical developments and corporate practices in the area of electronic finance.

Electronic finance is a dominating force changing business models and systems in financial services. New developments are creating newer valuation metrics, and reinforcing the costs and benefits of security systems.

This review concludes by pointing out potential areas of advancement in the coming decades and the possible evolution of newer e-finance models based on developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) and its implications for managerial finance.

This is a review of the impact of electronic finance over the past two decades. Looking back electronic finance has significantly transformed the activities of corporations. Looking forward, financial managers have to watch for two important technical developments of AI and IoT and its potential impact on finance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the applications and contributions of blockchain technology in finance in general, and to identify areas where the technology can make a larger impact in payment systems.

The authors do an exhaustive review of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, and examine the successful applications of blockchain technology in several finance disciplines including cryptocurrency. The authors critically evaluate the technical studies on behaviors in cryptocurrency prices.

Cryptocurrency is the first successful application of blockchain technology and can be used as the main fuel of the global money transfer network.

Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that can change the world with its convenience, transparency, accuracy and efficiency in speed and cost. The growth of blockchain usage in finance depends on further familiarization and trust gained by an increasing number of proven successful usage cases and testimonials as well as appropriate legislative changes.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the contributions that blockchain technology has made and is expected to make in the field of finance with the aim of adding value to corporate executives, investors, policy makers and a general audience.

The purpose of this study is the development of an integrated framework between corporate governance and sustainability, based on the advancements within the field of contemporary governance leading to a renewed focus on sustainable development.

In this paper, the authors provide succinct summary of the evolution of corporate governance over the past century from an historical perspective: starting with the early work of Berle and Means – which focuses on the legal separation of ownership and control – and the subsequent challenges within this framework – all the way to analyzing the major impact of Nobel Laureate Milton Freidman’s work on corporate goals and governance. The authors' approach identifies the key transformation of corporate goals and corporate goals' paradigm shift in progression and focus within corporate houses over time, including how these are approached in the present day by integrating the concept of primacy of all stakeholders. The authors relate this to contemporary developments in the Business Round table and the United Nations’ adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals. The authors also identify specific corporate governance themes within global economic forums, as well as the critical interlinkages needed by all global corporations to achieve sustainable growth.

The primary objectives of the corporate governance themes adopted by global economic forums this decade are in the best interest of all stakeholders – including customers, employees, regulators, local communities, and shareholders. This applies both during periods of relative stability and during crises. A review of the good corporate governance relies on internal mechanisms such as the structure of a board and incentives for management, and on external mechanisms such as institutions that demand accountability. All these mechanisms are important as the mechanisms form the core of how (and for whom) corporations generate value. Ultimately, optimal corporate governance can help deliver both economic gains and societies that value all.

With globalization, the public has higher expectations from corporate CEOs than in the past. Corporate leaders have the ultimate responsibility for creating an organizational culture that supports trust and ensures that corporate leaders' management and employees embody and act on the stated values and mission of their organization. Areas of increased social expectations that require the attention of boards of directors include diversity, transparency, equal opportunity, and eliminating all forms of harassment.

This study identifies a viable agenda for global corporations based on concurrent developments to achieve sustainable development and growth. The recent related research work is also presented.

The organizational form of financial institutions is related to their level of risk, leverage, liquidity and capitalization. High level of risk and leverage and lower levels of liquidity and capitalization are considered to be the root causes of the 2008 financial crisis. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if banks affiliated to holding company structure contributed more to the root causes of crisis than unaffiliated banks.

The paper isolates the effect of holding company association by restricting the sample to one-bank holding companies and individual banks. A comparative analysis of independent and holding company-affiliated banks is performed. Univariate analysis and multivariate regressions are used to compare the risk, leverage, liquidity and capitalization of affiliated and independent banks.

The paper finds that holding company affiliation is linked to several root causes of the 2008 financial crisis. Specifically, holding company affiliation results in higher levels of home mortgage loans underwritten and underperforming, higher leverage, lower liquidity and lower capitalization for the subsidiary bank.

The paper demonstrates that affiliated banks use their higher leveraged positions to engage in riskier home mortgage lending, sacrificing both liquidity and capital adequacy. These findings can help policy makers to focus on the group of banks that are part of holding company affiliation and implement such policies and regulations so as to avoid any re-occurrence of financial crisis.

This paper is the first to link the structural differences in banks to the root causes of financial crisis and to isolate the effect of holding company affiliation through sample selection. The paper will be valued to other researchers who try to isolate the effect of holding company affiliation and those studying the causes of the financial crisis of 2008.