[ S U R V E Y
|
A G E N T
B A N K S
I N
E M E R G I N G
M A R K E T S ]
Asking for more
Consistent with its Major Market equivalent, published in the Fall edition, the 2018 Agent Bank
in Emerging Markets Survey incorporates several major changes in design and presentation.
T
his is the 29th consecutive year in which Global Custodi-
an magazine has published a survey of client perceptions
of the quality of the services provided by the local
agents of global custodian and global investment banks. Over the
years, the survey has expanded and is now presented in three
segments: major markets (Fall edition); emerging markets (Win-
ter edition) and frontier markets (Spring edition).
It is the first year in which the magazine has joined forces
with AON McLagan investment Services (McLagan) to
produce the survey. This follows the agreement in March 2018
between Global Custodian and McLagan to co-operate in the
management of all the client experience surveys published in
the magazine.
Of the 1,150 responses received, 201 failed the validation pro-
cess and 130 were excluded as domestic, leaving 819 responses
for final survey calculations.
The ABEM survey was conducted between July and November
2018. It made use of a comprehensively revised survey question-
naire, following advice received in consultations with network
managers and agent banks. It is difficult to accommodate the
needs of every user of sub-custody and clearing services, but the
questions aim to address the current priorities of network man-
agers, which ascribe greater importance to risk, liquidity and
asset safety than to operational concerns such as settlement.
The 2017 Agent Banks in Emerging Markets (ABMM) survey
asked 24 questions divided between Relationship Management
and Client Service (4), Value Delivered (2), Settlement (4), Asset
Servicing (6), Ancillary Services (2), Reporting (3) and Tech-
nology (3). The 2018 survey asked 83 questions across Client
Service (4), Account Management (7), Asset Safety (8), Risk
Management (9), Liquidity Management (4), Regulation and
Compliance (6), Innovation (5), Asset Servicing (12), Pricing
(10), Technology (7) and Cash Management and FX (11). Both
incorporated areas for respondents to make written comments
about their service providers.
Although the 2018 questionnaire asked more questions, it
allowed respondents to skip any question or service area in
its entirety or rate an entire service area by answering a single
question. In other words, it was possible to assess a provider
in all 12 service areas by answering just 12 questions. In addi-
tion, the 2018 questionnaire allowed respondents to divide the
in-country operations into two groups: those they wished to
assess country by country and those they wished to assess as
a group. The intention was to give respondents the maximum
degree of flexibility in how they completed the questionnaire.
The format of the questionnaire was also changed. Respond-
60
Global Custodian
Winter 2018
ents were asked not to score their agent banks on particular
aspects of a service area, but to agree or disagree with a series
of propositions about a service area. The extent to which a
respondent agreed or disagreed with a proposition ranged from
Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree on scale of 20 points. For
publication, however, results were converted to the 7-point scale
(where 1=unacceptable and 7=excellent) familiar to readers of
Global Custodian.
The substantial revision of the questionnaire means that
comparisons between the 2017 and 2018 surveys is limited. Al-
though this has led to a short-term loss of continuity, the ability
to compare one year with another will be restored in 2019 and
be established by 2020. In the meantime, tables for each market
include the category and overall scores for all rated providers as
well as the market and global averages.
Response base
The goal of the ABEM survey is to assess the quality of ser-
vices as judged by cross-border responses only (in which a
respondent in one country is assessing an agent bank in another
country) rather than including domestic responses (in which a
respondent in one country is assessing a respondent in the same
country) or affiliated responses (in which the respondent is
linked to the agent bank being assessed by ownership, joint ven-
ture or other form of partnership or alliance). Published scores
are weighted for the size and sophistication of the respondent.
We are conscious of the scale of the effort required to complete
a lengthy questionnaire and are grateful to the many clients of
the agent banks that took the time and trouble to do so. We are
grateful also to the agent banks that completed the provider
questionnaire. This was designed by McLagan to match exactly
the questions posed to their clients, with the aim of picking up
Relative performance
The tables accompanying each market write up include scores
for individual providers alongside market and global averages.
Table 1 indicates the relative perceptions among the total sur-
vey response base of the quality of delivery in each service area.
This allows readers to compare their own perceptions to those
of the respondent pool as a whole. Not surprisingly, for exam-
ple, Asset Safety, which was rated highly in the major markets
survey, is the least regarded aspect of emerging market service
provision.