Background This study examines how FinTech adoption and intellectual capital shape ESG disclosure, and how ESG disclosure and dividend policy are associated with firm value in DSE-listed financial institutions. The framework focuses on a sequential Digital—ESG—Value mechanism rather than treating all constructs as parallel determinants. Method Using an unbalanced panel of DSE-listed bank-based financial institutions from 2015 to 2023, the study estimates firm and year fixed-effects models as the primary explanatory specification. System GMM is used to assess dynamic persistence and potential endogeneity, while quantile regression evaluates distributional heterogeneity. CS-ARDL is retained as a supplementary long-run sensitivity analysis, and a deep neural network is used only to assess out-of-sample prediction and nonlinear feature importance. Findings FinTech adoption and intellectual capital are positively associated with ESG disclosure. ESG disclosure is positively associated with dividend policy and firm value, while dividend policy is also positively associated with firm value. Financial performance conditions the ESG–dividend relationship. These estimates indicate robust associations but do not establish experimental causality. The predictive analysis confirms that FinTech, ESG disclosure, intellectual capital, and dividend policy contain information relevant to firm-value prediction. Conclusion The findings extend signalling theory, the resource-based view, and stakeholder theory by showing how digital capability and knowledge resources can support credible sustainability disclosure and market signalling. The results remain specific to listed Bangladeshi financial institutions and should be interpreted within that institutional setting.
Qamruzzaman et al. (2026) studied this question.