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A shift in focus
The 2018 Agent Bank in Major Markets Survey incorporates several major changes in design
and presentation, reflecting the growing importance of risk as a service consideration.
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. It is, however,
the first 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 Cus-
todian and McLagan to co-operate in the management of all the
client experience surveys published in the magazine. An FAQ,
explaining how the relationship between us works, can be found
on the following page.
The survey, which, going forward, will be renamed the Direct
Clearing and Custody Survey, was conducted between July
and September 2018. It made use of a comprehensively revised
survey questionnaire, following advice received in consultations
with network managers and agent banks. It is difficult to ac-
commodate the needs of every user of sub-custody and clearing
services, but the questions aim to address the current priorities
of network managers, which accord greater importance to risk,
liquidity and asset safety than to operational concerns such as
settlement.
The 2017 Agent Banks in Major Markets (ABMM) survey
asked 47 questions divided between Value and Commitment
(4), Relationship Management (4), Client Service (3), Report-
ing (5), Corporate Actions (5), Cash Management (4), Income
Collection (3), Tax Reclaims (5), Settlement (7) and Tech-
nology and Connectivity (7). The 2018 Direct Custody and
Clearing 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), Technol-
ogy (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-
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, with roughly one question in three being comparable
with the questions asked in 2017. Although 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.
Response base
In all, a total of 1,763 responses were received, of which 393
were discarded for a variety of reasons, leaving a total of 1,370
authenticated responses. The goal is to assess the quality of
services 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 re-
spondent is linked to the agent bank being assessed by own-
ership, joint venture or other form of partnership or alliance).
The per-country summary of the findings of the survey in the
following pages makes use of data filtered in this way. The
scores published below are weighted for the size and sophisti-
cation 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. As
a token of our appreciation for their work, McLagan will be
distributing to every respondent – after the survey is published
– a benchmarking report that shows how their assessment of
their service providers compares with that of other clients of the
same bank.
We are grateful also to the agent banks that completed the
provider questionnaire. This was designed to match exactly the
questions posed to their clients, with the aim of picking up any
mismatches between internal perceptions of the quality of ser-
vices provided and the external perceptions of the same services
by clients. A map depicting matches and mismatches is included
in the research reports that McLagan provides. Contact details
for these and other survey-related products and services are to
be found in the FAQ which follows on page 74.
Fall 2018
globalcustodian.com
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