East Asia

Agricultural Bank of China has fast-tracked its digital offerings this last year – and the market liked what it saw on its screens. By the end of 2016, ABC counted its internet banking users – across all platforms – at a staggering 711 million, more than half of China’s population.

HSBC has the widest network of any foreign bank in China by some distance:178 outlets in 57 cities. That visibility clearly helps in China and beyond.

There is a long- and widely held assumption that Chinese lenders are bad at funding the nation’s best young firms. It’s a belief that persists, often for good reason. China’s big banks prefer to fund big corporates – sometimes through force of habit, sometimes for political reasons (because they are told to).

China Citic Bank has grown quietly into its role as one of China’s most systemically important corporate and investment banks. It banks many of the mainland’s largest domestic and most globally acquisitive corporates, and is an increasingly weighty presence in the global capital markets.

Of the big four state lenders in China, none has done a better job of improving its image in recent years, at home and abroad, than China Construction Bank under chairman Wang Hongzhang. The Beijing-based financial institution is visible on advertising hoardings, on TV screens and in the pages of print magazines, touting its corporate, private and retail banking expertise in an increasing number of developed and developing markets.

E.Sun Commercial Bank has received praise for its efforts in providing high-end banking services to Taiwan’s army of small and medium-sized enterprises – the lifeblood of this island economy. But the mid-sized private lender also deserves plaudits for the speed with which it has become an important player in the fast-growing world of private banking.

This award can often be hard to judge. What, after all, constitutes excellence in corporate and social responsibility? For their part, banks are often keen to stress their fluffy, giving side, while neglecting to trumpet the way their actual financial services benefit themselves and their clients.

Taishin Bank has worked hard to craft a new digital offering tailored to the next generation of spenders, investors, savers, homebuyers and young entrepreneurs. Its brainchild can feel a bit hit-and-miss at times. Do young users of Richart really enjoy logging on to a website that features an endearing but irritatingly omnipresent cartoon dog?

Every now and then, a lender emerges that sees the market a little differently. E.Sun Commercial Bank is one such case: a relatively young (founded in 1992) financial institution with driven and capable senior management.