Asiamoney Best Bank Awards

It has been a busy year for all lenders, but particularly for TransBank. It increased its share capital in the first nine months of 2020 by Tug22 billion, to Tug72 billion ($25 million): this boosted its capital adequacy ratio to 43.48% from 31.5%, and made it Mongolia’s second-highest capitalized lender. The increase brings it in line with central bank demands and improves not only its risk tolerance, but also its ability to deliver the right services to the right customers.

It will be fascinating to watch LendMN develop as the effects of Covid-19 lessen. Founder Anar Chinbaatar’s big idea was to build a digital payday lender that could approve and disburse a loan in minutes. When LendMN opened for business in 2017, issuing small, unsecured loans, that process generally took most traditional Mongolian lenders several days to do.

Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia’s long-planned merger with Ulaanbaatar City Bank (UCB), announced in June 2020, made good sense on many levels.

Khan Bank has a vice-like grip on this award, and for good reason. Its stranglehold on a vast but thinly populated market is all but complete: most parents open up an account at Khan when their child is still in the womb.

Each year, Shinhan Bank finds new layers to add to its already complex corporate and social responsibility offering.

No Korean financial institution is better at serving small and medium-sized enterprises than KB Financial Group.

It seems hard to believe that kakaobank didn’t even exist four years ago. Formed in 2017 with seed capital from a handful of big financial institutions, including KB Kookmin Bank (which owns 9.9% of kakaobank) and Korea Investment Value Asset Management (with 28.6%), it has taken the country by storm.

Citi’s strength in depth means it stands apart from its global peers in Korea. Because it has a large physical presence in the country, it was forced to act quickly in the early months of 2020 when Covid-19 struck and thousands of staff had to work from home.

Korea Investment & Securities is a worthy winner of this award. The Seoul-based financial institution’s investment banking team had a good year, defined by a strong and steady flow punctuated by big-ticket deals.