The evaluation performance for commercial banks by intuitionistic fuzzy numbers: the case of Spain

In a globalized world, the banking sector has been forced to advance not only in financial performance, but also in non-financial performance, especially in sustainability criteria. For this purpose, multicriteria decision methods are especially suited to evaluate efficiency and to make a stable ranking of the most outstanding banks in the Spanish financial system. However, we are aware of the difficulties involved due to the inherent uncertainty and subjectivity of this process. For this reason, the use of fuzzy models is proposed, especially intuitionistic fuzzy numbers combined with the Analytic Hierarchy Process and the TOPSIS. The combination of financial criteria based on the CAMELS rating system with non-financial sustainability criteria makes it possible to order the Spanish banking system based on global efficiency. The most relevant contributions are: first, the use of intuitionistic fuzzy numbers in the performance evaluation process, whereby the quality of the information available can be quantified; and the most important one, a simplification of the process in the implementation of the intuitionistic fuzzy TOPSIS. Finally, through a sensibility analysis, it is possible to isolate the relevance of the sustainability process to obtain the global performance evaluation