This year for the first time, Euromoney has produced the Trade Finance Stars, which recognizes providers with exceptional qualitative ratings in particular regions and areas of client service.
To produce the results, Euromoney examined the Trade Finance Survey’s 18 Quality of Service categories and splits them into five buckets:
1. Products: Import/export financing – open account payments, standby letters of credit, letters of credit, guarantees, factoring/forfaiting;
2. Products: Business strategy – working capital financing facilities, structured trade finance, supply chain financing;
3. Services: Product advisory – working capital advisory, digital trade finance capabilities, risk mitigation advisory;
4. Services: Business support – support through currency fluctuations, understanding of product suite, advice on availability and access to government-backed schemes/products;
5. Services: Soft skills/relationship management – speed of response on credit provision, level of additional support in difficult conditions, understanding of business, competitive pricing.
In each category, clients had scored their banks on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being poor and 7 indicating exceptional quality in that area of service.
To be considered, a bank had to receive the greater of 5% of the votes in their region or at least 10 votes in regions where there were 0 to 200 total votes cast, or at least 20 votes in regions where there were more than 200 votes cast.
Banks that received sufficient votes for consideration were then assessed on their average score in each subcategory of service. Within each bucket, the average score of the subcategory scores in that bucket were taken and then compared with the average scores for that bucket of all the other qualifying banks.
The bank with the highest average score in each bucket was then considered the leading star and any other bank with an average score within 5% of the leading bank’s score was also considered a star manager for that bucket. A bank that was a star in one bucket is considered a One Star Trade Finance Provider, and would be a Two or Three or Four or Five Star Provider depending on the number of buckets in which they had sufficiently high scores to qualify.
See also: Trade Finance Stars 2017: Results
For any queries, please contact data@euromoney.com