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France
BNP Paribas Securities Services
Clients feel at home with BNP Paribas in its home market,
and not just because (as the scores confirm) it manages their
accounts and settles their trades efficiently. They believe the
bank has the ear of the regulators and, a few worries about the
whereabouts and accessibility of assets and the costs of cash,
currency and collateral apart, they like the counterparty risk.
BNP Paribas is rightly admired for innovation, which is a fitting
accolade for a bank that employs more than the usual number of
engineers (especially in France). Oddly, this has not yet translat-
ed into a similar level of appreciation for the technology, though
BNP Paribas has thought about what a digital, data-led approach
to custody might look like.
Respondents are less enthusiastic about the asset servicing and
especially the pricing. A client says, “Invoices and statements
must be checked carefully, and errors in calculation or collection
have occurred, some significant ones in the last 24 months.” Société Générale Securities Services
SGSS remains a believer in a local presence, perhaps especially
in post-T2S environment, as the best guarantor of asset safety,
efficient asset servicing and regulatory forbearance, and the
home to its corporate headquarters is at the heart of the 27-mar-
ket proprietary network of the bank.
A paucity of responses makes it hard to be sure, but the aver-
ages derived from a handful of respondents are deeply flattering
on every point save the pricing and especially the human side,
with scores for client service and relationship management that
fall short of the highest global standards. On this evidence, if the
A-rated bank can lift client service and relationship management
to the same level as its operational services, it will be unbeatable.
Deutsche Bank
Paris is the home of an important component of the novel
settlement plus asset servicing model for TARGET2-Securities
that Deutsche developed for a major global custodian bank – the
French central securities depository (CSD) recently celebrated
the second anniversary of its successful migration to T2S – but
here even the settlement scores lack élan. A small number of
respondents like the German bank as a counterparty but find
little to please them in the quality of the services they receive.
One of the challenges in fashioning a European custody strategy CACEIS
A client grumbles that CACEIS “takes too long to respond on
emails,” sends “disoriented information” and “answers slowly,
we need to chase for updatings.” Yet the average scores the asset
servicing arm of Crédit Agricole receives from a small number
of respondents are redolent of that era just a few years ago when
CACEIS used regularly to top the poll of French sub-custodians.
Now, seemingly more absorbed by its domestic and international
funds business, the bank did not receive many responses to the
survey this year.
for the post-T2S marketplace is to balance the short term needs
of clients against their longer-term interests.
WEIGHTED AVERAGE SCORES
Country Scores Global Scores
n/a 5.35 5.20
BNP Paribas Deutsche Bank CACEIS Société Générale
Market share (% of responses) 65% 15% 12% 9%
Relationship management 5.47 5.04 5.80 Client service 5.58 4.73 5.74 n/a 5.38 5.40
Account management 5.46 5.15 6.10 n/a 5.47 5.44
Asset safety 5.49 5.61 5.96 n/a 5.57 5.68
Risk management 5.53 6.03 5.80 n/a 5.64 5.46
Liquidity management 5.02 6.28 6.86 n/a 5.32 4.89
Regulation and compliance 5.60 5.27 5.89 n/a 5.55 5.64
Innovation 5.64 4.23 5.83 n/a 5.45 5.18
Asset servicing 4.95 5.08 5.69 n/a 5.05 5.09
Pricing 4.93 4.42 5.84 n/a 4.97 4.82
Technology 5.19 5.52 6.00 n/a 5.26 5.28
Cash management and FX 4.12 5.72 5.00 n/a 4.19 4.25
Total 5.26 5.22 5.86 n/a 5.29 5.24
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Global Custodian
Fall 2018