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Blurring boundaries
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Global Custodian survey of
client perceptions of the quality of service provided by local agents. Several
smaller markets have achieved enviable results in the process.
T
he Agent Banks in Frontier Markets (ABFM) survey marks
the completion of the three stages of the survey in 2018-19,
beginning with the Agent Banks in Major Markets (ABMM)
survey (published in the Fall 2018 edition of the magazine), and
continuing with the Agent Banks in Emerging Markets (ABEM)
survey (published in the Winter 2018-19 edition of the maga-
zine). Countries are allocated to the ABMM, ABEM and ABFM
surveys mainly on the basis of their status within the MSCI
indices.
The ABFM survey was separated from the ABEM survey in
2015, chiefly because the lower levels of assets in custody and
transactional activity made it reasonable to expect respondents
to offer less granular assessment of their direct custody and
clearing agents.
This year’s market list includes three countries that were last
year covered in the ABEM survey. These are Argentina, Morocco
and the Slovak Republic. In addition, three markets appear for
the first time: Albania, Panama and North Macedonia. While all
three receive write ups, only Panama attracts sufficient respons-
es for ratings to be calculated.
Table 1 ranks the ABFM markets in this year’s survey by the
percentage of the overall response pool that they account for.
Romania and Bulgaria again feature near the top of the list,
while Cyprus and Vietnam have moved up several places from
2018.
The spread of overall scores by market in the ABFM survey
suggests that size is not necessarily a determinant of efficien-
cy. Although the expansion of the questionnaire this year may
Table 1: Percentage of overall responses
Market % of
responses 2018 ranking Market % of
responses 2018 ranking Market % of
responses 2018 ranking
Cyprus 5.98% 7 Estonia 2.72% 24 Ivory Coast 1.09% 28
Vietnam 5.43% 10 Kenya 2.72% 9 Kazakhstan 0.91% 33
Romania 5.25% 2 Latvia 2.72% 26 Malawi 0.91% 37
Bulgaria 4.71% 1 Iceland 2.54% 29 Ukraine 0.91% 31
Argentina 3.99% n/a Lithuania 2.54% 27 Zimbabwe 0.91% 32
Bahrain 3.99% 18 Serbia 2.36% 6 Namibia 0.72% 34
Kuwait 3.80% 19 Zambia 2.36% 14 Uganda 0.72% 20
Mauritius 3.80% 11 Slovak Republic 2.17% n/a Bosnia Herzegovina 0.54% 35
Morocco 3.80% n/a Slovenia 2.17% 8 Tanzania 0.54% 30
Sri Lanka 3.62% 23 Ghana 1.99% 21 Albania 0.36% n/a
Croatia 3.44% 3 Jordan 1.99% 13 Georgia 0.18% 42
Oman 3.44% 22 Tunisia 1.63% 17 Lebanon 0.18% 39
Nigeria 3.08% 4 Costa Rica 1.27% 40 North Macedonia 0.18% n/a
Bangladesh 2.72% 15 Panama 1.27% n/a Swaziland 0.18% 38
Botswana 2.72% 16 Uruguay 1.27% 43 Venezuela 0.18% 41
58
Global Custodian
Spring 2019