Governance moderators on the nexus between FinTech and ESG disclosure in Saudi banks

This study examines the association between FinTech disclosure and environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure in Saudi banks and further unfolds the moderating role of board independence (IND) and sustainability committees (SUS_C). Using a balanced panel of 10 listed banks from 2015 to 2024, we measure FinTech disclosure from annual-report keyword frequencies and obtain ESG and pillar scores from Bloomberg. The primary bank fixed-effects estimates indicate positive associations between FinTech disclosure and overall ESG disclosure, particularly its social and governance pillars. Evidence concerning the environmental pillar emerges only after governance moderators are considered. In the combined model, the FinTech × IND × SUS_C coefficient is statistically insignificant for overall ESG, social and governance disclosure, while its positive association with environmental disclosure provides only initial evidence of joint moderation. Conditional marginal effects and supplementary two-way fixed-effects analyses using bank-clustered, Driscoll-Kraay and wild-cluster bootstrap inference do not consistently confirm the environmental result. The findings therefore provide suggestive and estimator-sensitive evidence that governance structure may condition the relationship between FinTech and ESG disclosure. The study contributes evidence from an emerging-market banking system to the literature on FinTech, ESG disclosure and corporate governance.