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An expanding universe
The 2018 Prime Brokerage Survey has been revised to allow respondents to assess a broader range of service requirements .
TABLE 1 : AGGREGATE RESULTS BY SIZE AND LOCATION OF RESPONDENTS
Global Weighted Average Scores
Firm Size
The 2018 Prime Brokerage Survey is a continuation in a series of surveys produced jointly by AON McLagan Investment Services ( McLagan ) and Global Custodian ( GC ), following signature of their agreement to co-operate in the management of client experience surveys in the securities services industry from March 2018 . A Survey FAQ , published in this edition and online , explains how the relationship works and who to contact in the event of specific queries . As in 2017 , the Prime Brokerage Survey , which was open for submissions between April and July 2018 , asked clients to assess the services that they receive from Prime Brokers . Comparison between years was very limited , as this year ’ s questionnaire was extensively modified from 2017 . Last year ’ s questionnaire covered 38 questions across nine service areas . This year ’ s survey was expanded to 51 questions across 18 service areas ( See Methodology ). Respondents were , however , able to offer an overall assessment of a service area , if they so wished . Clients were asked to rate services by stating how much they agreed or disagreed with a statement regarding a service based on a scale of 20 points . For publication , however , results were converted to the seven-point scale ( where 1 = unacceptable and 7 = excellent ) familiar to Global Custodian readers . In the provider write-ups that follow , respondent profiles by size and location are published along with category scores and their variation from the global average . Table 1 below provides aggregate scores by category as well as by the respondent segments covered in the provider profiles . Read in conjunction with the assessments that follow , this may add further colour to individual provider results . The table above shows , for example , that the largest respondents are also the harshest markers . This may well be reflected in the category scores of those providers with a sizeable cohort of large firms in their survey response sample .
Location Large Medium Small Americas EMEA APAC
Total 5.80 5.73 5.79 5.82 5.94 5.47 5.77 Capital introductions 5.37 5.57 5.57 5.24 5.37 5.38 5.33 Client service 6.01 5.96 6.01 6.08 6.15 5.67 6.01 Consulting 5.86 5.24 5.83 5.93 5.87 5.79 5.88 Operations 5.97 5.98 5.94 5.99 6.14 5.56 5.91 Technology 5.60 5.29 5.54 5.50 5.75 5.26 5.56 Product development 5.46 5.69 5.41 5.41 5.65 5.14 5.26 Risk management 5.57 5.41 5.58 5.69 5.73 5.21 5.57 Asset safety 5.74 5.46 5.67 5.58 5.92 5.39 5.63 Sales and marketing 6.13 6.21 6.13 6.20 6.26 5.83 6.02 Trading and execution 5.85 5.88 5.79 5.88 5.98 5.43 5.87 Delta 1 , swaps and financing 5.72 5.62 5.71 5.52 5.84 5.52 5.72 Stock borrowing and lending 5.97 6.04 5.99 6.01 6.18 5.55 5.75
Foreign exchange prime brokerage
5.67 5.55 5.80 5.56 5.87 5.33 5.53
Fixed income 5.77 6.18 5.85 5.74 5.89 5.29 5.91 OTC clearing 5.85 5.92 5.79 5.86 5.84 5.62 6.20 Listed derivatives 5.89 5.87 5.93 5.85 5.87 5.65 6.18
With aggregate category scores ranging from 5.37 ( Capital Introductions ) to 6.13 ( Sales and Marketing ), the overall impression in this year ’ s Prime Brokerage Survey is that concerns about any particular service are limited to individual providers and are not survey-wide .
See page 95 for Methodology
72 Global Custodian The Hedge Fund Annual 2018