London-based Lafferty Group released a new ranking of global banks based on a variety of factors. This list has many surprises.
Here is a brief description of the methodology used:
Using quantitative and qualitative criteria and looking at areas such as strategy, culture, customer care, brand promise and financial performance, Lafferty Group uses the banks’ annual reports to arrive at a quality rating (from one to five stars) for each of 100 financial institutions in 28 countries.
The 15 financial institutions that received the highest ratings in the world are:
- Capitec from South Africa
- Barclays Africa from South Africa
- HDFC from India
- Discover from the US
- Public Bank from Malaysia
- Hong Leong from Malaysia
- OCBC from Singapore
- TSB from the UK
- Swedbank of Sweden
- Handelsbanken from Sweden
- National Bank of Kuwait
- ADIB from the UAE, and
- Sterling Bank from Nigeria
- Arab National Bank from Saudi Arabia
- BCA from Indonesia
Most of the major developed world banks received only a 3-star or 2-star Lafferty quality ratings. This is indeed interesting since they seem to dominate the world and the media. However this ranking shows that there are banks especially in the emerging markets that are better than their developed world peers based on certain factors.
I wrote an article many years ago about Sweden-based Handelsbanken. It is the world’s best stock in terms of returns even beating Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway . Other than the two Swedish banks and the one bank from Singapore, rest of the banks in this list are from emerging and frontier markets.
Source: Large universal banks lag behind in new quality ratings, Bobsguide
Disclosure: Long Swedbank (SWDBY)
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