The award for the region’s best bank for corporate responsibility recognizes the holistic commitment to responsible banking of SME lender ProCredit Group.

The region's best banks, country by country

A decade of work on reinforcing capital bases, managing bad debts, improving risk management processes and investment in technology paid off for the big regional banking groups in central and eastern Europe (CEE) during the first 12 months of the pandemic.

Santander has spent four years catching up with local and regional rivals that were quicker to adapt to mobile banking. In 2017 it saw itself as the leading bank in Spain but found its app ranked 13th in the country. The bank’s leaders, under executive chairman Ana Botín, realized they had to transform Santander and give key senior executives specific responsibility.

In a year when technology was key to success in banking, Tinkoff Bank’s groundbreaking ecosystem and relentless pace of innovation make the Russian lender the standout candidate for central and eastern Europe’s best digital bank award.

With a unique reach into the small and medium-sized enterprise, and mass affluent segments in central and eastern Europe, as well as a long tradition of wealth management in its Austrian home market, Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is ideally positioned to play a leading role in private banking in the region.

Digital leadership and a client-centric business model made ING Bank Slaski an ideal partner for Poland’s SMEs during the first 12 months of the pandemic. Its ability to support clients and maintain growth during a time of market turmoil makes it the worthy winner of the award for CEE’s best bank for SMEs.

In a difficult year for M&A in central and eastern Europe, UniCredit once again leveraged its regional network, sectoral approach and careful market positioning to notch the largest number of announced deals in the 12 months to the end of March.

Covid has, unsurprisingly, dominated the corporate responsibility agenda at banks across Europe. A key determinant in this category was the effectiveness with which firms addressed the acute challenges that many of their clients have faced, from the initial healthcare emergency to longer-term financial distress. BBVA stepped up to the task promptly and at scale and takes the regional award this year.

HSBC, with big operations in the UK and France as well as a presence on the ground in 20 markets across Europe, wins the award for the region’s best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises this year, against strong challenges from UniCredit and Santander.

Business diversification has proved to be a crucial asset for BNP Paribas over the past year. Relatively intact operations such as fixed income trading have provided vital props to its financial performance compared with local rivals that had made deeper cuts to those businesses pre-Covid. Post-pandemic the bank has become even more important as a financier to its western European clients. It has also moved earlier than other top-tier global banks to burnish its sustainability credentials.

New platforms that underwrite and process invoices due from large creditworthy payers may encourage bank and institutional financing for small and medium-sized enterprises.

New FX platform MillTechFX reckons that rather than cannibalizing existing trading activity, it can generate new flows for its counterparty banks by undercutting standard exchange rates.

That distant sound is the warning bell as bond investors’ desperate search for yield leads them down ever-risker paths.

The French lender’s wealth management university, introduced in 2017, is central to its ability to train private bankers to reach out and serve the high-net-worth clients the bank cannot afford to lose.

Fintechs are caught in a brutal competitive squeeze between losses on businesses they are good at and the urgent need to offer new ones.

More fintechs are selling out to big incumbent banks, but the German pair would rather merge to achieve their vision of savings as a service.

The European Commission keeps pressing, but a consolidated tape for bonds is not yet realistic – and firms should use AI analytics to create a quasi-tape.

The past year has shown how building a corporate and investment bank more equivalent to its standing in retail could be a vital prop to Santander’s earnings, especially in Europe. Does divisional head José Maria Linares now have the backing to match his ambitions?

What worries the wealthy most? It is a question that provides answers the rest of us would be wise to heed.

When Stephen Williams joined HSBC more than 20 years ago, the bank was a backmarker in Asian debt markets. When he retires next month, he leaves it top of the heap.

We are at the peak of the hype cycle for central bank digital currencies, now being touted as one of the most fundamental innovations in the history of central banking. It is time for central banks and governments to be honest with unenthused populations. CBDC can’t deliver all the many promised improvements. As we come to design choices, there will be trade-offs. We might get improved payments but less credit. We could see greater financial inclusion but will lose privacy. Are the few benefits really worth the risk of disrupting the financial system?

Buying robo-adviser Nutmeg is a bold and telling first step for the US bank’s new digital banking venture in the UK.

With margin requirements rising sharply, banks must do a much better job managing surpluses and shortages of collateral across all their businesses.

Scandinavia’s biggest bank is at last outperforming European banks in the way that smaller Nordic lenders did in the 2010s. The jury is out on whether or not this can continue when its more nationally focused Nordic peers regain momentum.

HSBC’s new global wallet offering is the latest in a line of services enabling businesses to make and receive international payments from a single account.

Naysayers were swift to condemn Lithuanian involvement in the German scandal.

Barclays has long wanted to rebuild the European ECM franchise it got rid of in 1997 with the sale of BZW, but has often struggled to do so. With a foundation of corporate broking in the UK and hiring in continental Europe, it’s finally making some progress.

Since Jes Staley took charge of Barclays at the end of 2015, he has faced constant questions over his ability to reposition the firm as a credible force in investment banking. Sticking to his guns in the face of activist shareholder pressure, he now looks vindicated, but growing from here presents a new challenge.

Corporate insolvencies are poised to rise sharply once pandemic-related state support is removed. In the UK, companies must familiarize themselves with new insolvency regulations as the deadline for the removal of protections looms.