[ 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 ]
Hungary
Raiffeisen Bank International
This is home territory for the rising force in CEE custody and
clearing, and not just in the historical sense. RBI has one of
the largest banking businesses in its entire regional network
in Hungary, and its securities services operation aims to shine.
A sizeable but demanding group of clients will not disappoint
them when it comes to their assessment of the quality of their
core services and, if the ordinary scores earned by the RMs are
counter-intuitive, the exceptional score for client service is not.
BNP Paribas Securities Services
The French bank added securities services to its Budapest
business a decade ago. It was always going to be hard to match
the stellar performance of a year ago, but the relatively small
number of clients that have responded for BNP Paribas in 2018
still deliver an overall average score that is outstanding, faltering
in only a couple of service areas, including on the consistent and
predictable matter of price.
Citi
Average scores are down again this year for Citi Budapest. As in
2017, the chief point of vulnerability is price, but the scores are
ordinary across a range of service areas. The bank can be pleased
that its RMs and its technology win plaudits, and that confidence
in its balance sheet strength is high. Citi also owns the sort of
clientele that is hard to please – one does acknowledge “good ser-
vice” – but, on this evidence at least, the bank is not keeping pace
with industry standards at the local or the global level.
UniCredit
The bank has halted the slides in scores that was apparent
here a year ago, but the averages across almost all service areas
lack the enthusiasm that characterised the work of the CEE
regional custodian in its heyday. Curiously, UniCredit has not
matched the zest of the Hungarian stock market over the last
few years.
Deutsche Bank
It is a pity that the German bank did not garner quite enough
responses to be rated here, because the respondents that have
assessed the quality of its services are clearly impressed – es-
pecially by a relationship management model that is obviously
working well at the local, regional and global levels. Earthier
fields, such as onboarding and safekeeping, do not elicit the
same degree of enthusiasm.
Others
KBC Securities received a number of responses, though an
insufficient quantity to be assessed in full. The firm, which used
to offer the same integrated DMA brokerage and custody service
in Budapest as it did in Brussels, was this year merged with K&H
Bank following the decision by the management of the Flemish
bank to concentrate on investment banking.
Data was also received for CIB Bank, the Hungarian subsid-
iary of Intesa Sanpaolo Group, also in insufficient quantity to
make meaningful judgments about the quality of its custody
services.
WEIGHTED AVERAGE SCORES
Raiffeisen Bank
International
BNP Paribas
Citi
UniCredit Bank
Deutsche Bank
Share of validated responses (%) 29% 16% 23% 16% 10%
Relationship management 6.14 5.64 4.94 4.88 n/a
Market Average Global Average
5.32 5.30
Client service 6.43 6.88 5.19 4.56 n/a 5.47 5.56
Account management 6.17 5.00 4.38 4.72 n/a 5.08 5.14
Asset safety 4.63 5.62 4.15 4.62 n/a 4.68 4.60
Risk management 6.47 5.79 4.95 5.17 n/a 5.58 5.50
Liquidity management 6.06 4.25 4.74 4.53 n/a 4.96 5.14
Regulation and compliance 5.13 6.33 4.50 5.06 n/a 5.11 4.84
Innovation 5.00 4.11 4.12 3.79 n/a 4.45 4.75
Asset servicing 5.19 6.60 5.10 4.79 n/a 4.91 5.52
Pricing 5.38 6.00 5.23 4.87 n/a 5.26 5.28
Technology 6.10 6.89 5.11 5.48 n/a 5.64 5.41
Cash management and FX 5.95 6.71 5.45 4.71 n/a 5.42 5.42
Total 5.73 5.60 4.83 4.76 n/a 5.16 5.23
Winter 2018
globalcustodian.com
69