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Halyk Bank has its fingers in several pies, from retail and SME banking to insurance and asset management, and is a long-established leader across different parts of the financial markets. It is not just the Central Asian country’s biggest bank by assets, but also ranks top in terms of deposits, net loans and net income.

The country’s government is talking a big game about opening up – but how likely is real change?

Commercial Bank of Sri Lanka, the island’s biggest non-government bank, has had a relatively good crisis thanks to strong discipline and leadership.

Government officials and bankers see the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to overhaul energy policy and expand the range of financing options available for the country’s infrastructure needs.

Jeevan Gnanam, scion of a grand Sri Lankan business family, is driving financial sector modernization and helping to revitalise a once-thriving part of the capital.

The last year put the spotlight on corporate social responsibility. Sri Lanka's banks demonstrated their dedication to the country not only through their assistance to clients, but also by supporting the government in making sure the population had access to protective equipment and the other aid necessary to get through a pandemic. Commercial Bank of Ceylon was one of the banks that extended help to the community in new ways. That, coupled with the bank's longstanding CSR projects, made the bank Sri Lanka's best for CSR last year.

SQB, as state-owned Sanoat Qurilish Bank is better known, is coming up to its centenary. Established in 1922, it has, over time, become a premier player in the whole gamut of banking in Uzbekistan: state, corporate and retail lending; deposit-taking; cash-handling; international transfers; letters of credit; and foreign-exchange operations.

This new-ish entrant on the scene is already turning heads. It was only in May 2019 that Tenge, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s Halyk Bank JSC, won a licence from the Central Bank of Uzbekistan. In less than a year, it was fully capitalized and running five branches in three cities.

In the coronavirus era, every financial institution is suddenly rushing to grow and solidify their digital footprint. But 30-year-old Hamkorbank appears to be learning new tricks faster than many of its peers.

Though relatively small in terms of assets – which stand at just $489 million – Orient Finans Bank (OFB) often has a markedly outsized impact on Uzbek society. That was particularly true in 2020 when the nation’s 33 million people faced the threat of a pandemic.

While most young, dynamic banks had a rotten year in 2020, CEO Ikram Abdukakhorov and his team further strengthened Asia Alliance Bank’s position in everything from lending to foreign exchange.

More than three quarters of Sri Lanka's enterprises are in the small and medium-sized category. They form the backbone of the economy but tend to be the hardest hit by unexpected shocks. Those that relied on tourism were knocked hard by the Easter Sunday bomb attacks in 2019; in many cases, their debt moratoriums extended into 2020 when the pandemic broke out.