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Private banking and wealth management, where it is common for the majority of the workforce to be women, is the only area of banking with anything like equality of representation. But women are often in junior relationship manager positions and thin out at the higher levels of management. Those women who have reached the top explain why their corner of the industry looks different to the rest and what can be done to make it better.

An era ended at the so-called millionaires’ factory when legendary boss Nicholas Moore retired in November after more than a decade at the helm and 33 years at the bank. Moore has delivered an unbroken profit record at Macquarie, which has built up an infrastructure portfolio encompassing US tollways and European airports and utilities. His final months at the top were no exception: Moore announced net profit of A$1.31 billion ($942 million) for the first half of the financial year, which ends on September 30, up 5% higher from a year ago.

UBS is regarded as a yardstick for foreign banks in Australia, and this year simply confirmed it. Local chief executive Matthew Grounds’ team ended the review period top of the league table for mergers and acquisitions, as well as in equity capital markets.

Yet again, Credit Suisse has shown that its name is synonymous with high-end private banking.

We’ve taken these two awards together this year, thanks in large part to an obvious idea Westpac introduced to make life easier for its army of small and medium-sized enterprise clients. Westpac positions itself as Australia’s bank for business. It claims to have banking relationships with more than a million business customers, or half of all Australian businesses, and is the primary banker for about 25% of that million; it holds A$111 billion ($79.8 billion) of their deposits while lending them a collective A$150 billion.

Bendigo and Adelaide gets our award largely because in a year when Australian banks got a roasting from the royal commission, the nation’s fifth-biggest bank, Bendigo came off relatively well compared to the big four of Westpac, ANZ, CommBank and NAB.

Mongolia’s big financial institutions are defined almost by design. All are full-service lenders, but while Khan Bank specializes in retail lending and XacBank in serving SMEs, two other outfits – Golomt Bank and Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia – lavish their attention on Mongolia’s big corporates.

A decade ago, private banking was all but unknown in Mongolia. Now, virtually every bank has at least one gleaming office in the capital, dedicated purely to serving the wealthy and their dependants. Golomt Bank offers an expanding repertoire of private banking services, as does the country’s biggest lender, Khan Bank, whose Priority and Signature services, launched in 2010, cater to more than 35,000 customers.

Digital banking has been a big hit in this big country that has barebones infrastructure and a high level of smartphone penetration. A decade ago, most bank transactions were done in the branch; now, that share is below 10% and falling. Disruptive fintech firms are pushing into the sector, forcing traditional banks to up their game.

Founded in 2001 and partly owned by the International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, XacBank has always been the go-to bank in Mongolia for small and medium-sized enterprises.