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Portugal
BNP Paribas Securities Services
Lisbon is home to an international operations centre that BNP
Paribas Securities Services opened here in 2008, so the bank is
invested here in ways that were not envisaged when it launched
its Portuguese custody operation in 1999. Naturally, most of the
respondents are using BNP Paribas in multiple markets, and the
scoring reprises some familiar themes. Client service is manned
by knowledgeable and responsive people. RMs are top quality.
Trades always settle on time, but asset-servicing is patchy. BNP
Paribas is more innovative than most. Cash management and FX
services are satisfactory, but more choice and readier disclosure
of costs would be welcome. Likewise, the services are competi-
tively priced, but that does not mean clients would not like them
to be lower, and more flexibly structured. BNP Paribas could
also do more help its clients manage cash and stock borrowing
costs down and work harder to put their collateral to its most
remunerative use.
Millennium bcp
Banco Comercial Portugues (BCP) is only just over 30 years old
but, after making a string of acquisitions before the financial
crisis and maintaining its autonomy through both that crisis and
the subsequent sovereign debt crisis that hit Portugal in 2010-14,
it is now the largest commercial bank in the country. The small
number of clients that responded are not quite large enough in
number to confirm these findings about service quality, but the
averages they generate are flattering in the extreme across all
operational areas. The only visible blips lie in client service and
relationship management. It received impressive scores last year
too, but these are even better.
Deutsche Bank
The German bank has provided a custody service here since
2008, initially as part of a service provided by a combination of
local and remote operations spanning the then four Euronext
markets, but much has changed in the Portuguese economy
since then, though the stock market has made little upward pro-
gress since the acute phase of the sovereign debt crisis ended in
2014. Interestingly, Deutsche Bank made a point of stressing that
the recent sale of its private and commercial banking business
in Portugal to a Spanish buyer did not signal any loss of commit-
ment to servicing financial institutions here. The small number
of respondents certainly think the bank provides a good service
in Lisbon, though they would like the client service to be better
and the price of the services to be lower.
Novo Banco
The successor to the failed Banco Espirito Santo (BES), now
owned by a fund managed by an American private equity fund,
attracted a small number of responses, which suggest that the
core services are satisfactory, but the bank should invest in RMs.
Santander Securities Services
Santander, did not attract enough responses to be assessed in full,
but those clients that did respond offered a flattering verdict.
WEIGHTED AVERAGE SCORES
BNP Paribas Millennium BCP Deutsche Bank Novo Banco Santander Securities
Market Average
Services Market share (% of responses) 67% 17% 8% 4% 4% Relationship management 5.50 5.44 n/a n/a n/a 5.38 5.20
Client service 5.68 5.58 n/a n/a n/a 5.53 5.40
Account management 5.41 6.01 n/a n/a n/a 5.53 5.44
Asset safety 5.92 6.34 n/a n/a n/a 5.99 5.68
Risk management 5.48 5.88 n/a n/a n/a 5.58 5.46
Liquidity management 4.90 n/a n/a n/a n/a 5.11 4.89
Regulation and compliance 5.68 6.34 n/a n/a n/a 5.67 5.64
Innovation 5.72 6.20 n/a n/a n/a 5.62 5.18
Asset servicing 5.06 5.85 n/a n/a n/a 5.24 5.09
Pricing 4.97 6.27 n/a n/a n/a 5.15 4.82
Technology 5.22 6.00 n/a n/a n/a 5.33 5.28
Cash management and FX 4.34 5.50 n/a n/a n/a 4.38 4.25
Total 5.33 5.92 n/a n/a n/a 5.41 5.24
94
Global Custodian
Fall 2018
Global Average