In September 2019 Garanti BBVA signed the world’s first gender loan, a newly designed structure that the bank hopes will encourage its customers to improve their gender equality performance.

BNP Paribas has sustainability and inclusiveness at its heart, as shown in its approach to all of its stakeholders. This year the bank wins the award for the region’s best bank for corporate responsibility.

Goldman Sachs’s first ever investor day in January 2020 might have left more questions than answers around the firm’s forays into the brave new worlds of consumer and transaction banking. But one thing was unshakeable – its investment bank franchise. This year it is our choice as the US’s best investment bank.

Tight labour markets and low interest rates put a floor under credit demand across central and eastern Europe last year and mitigated the effects on banking sectors of slowing economic growth, regulatory curbs on consumer lending and proliferating sectoral levies.

Societe Generale’s footprint in CEE has changed dramatically over the last four years. At the start of 2016, the French group had one of the largest banking networks in the region, covering 13 countries from Albania to Georgia.

At a time of global economic retrenchment, dollar volatility, slowing trade flows and border closures, Africa needs deeper localization of markets and financing. Standard Bank’s expertise in these fields makes it the clear choice for best investment bank in Africa this year.

Societe Generale has long been active in promoting finance for small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa.

Keeping supply chains functioning is essential for the success of CEE’s open, globally connected economies, and the banks best-placed to do so are those that combine deep local knowledge with international expertise.

When Singapore suffered a second spike in coronavirus cases in April, attention turned to the city state’s migrant labourers, an army of essential workers described by a former head of the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health as society’s “most invisible” members.

The vital role for UK corporate clients played by Barclays was clearer than ever during the coronavirus crisis: the bank arranged £9.9 billion of commercial paper issuance under the Bank of England’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility, almost half of the total.

Since joining Habib Bank in early 2018 as president and chief executive, former JPMorgan banker Muhammad Aurangzeb has transformed the Pakistan-based lender from the ground up.

The best digital bank award goes to Banco Inter, which has pulled off the difficult feat of keeping both its investors happy following its 2018 IPO – as it matures from a rapid growth story – and its clients.

HSBC has been central to maintaining imports of vital goods into the region, even while national borders slammed shut.

The 2020 award for the best bank for advisory goes to BR Partners. It is an outstanding growth story: the investment bank boutique was opened just 10 years ago by founder and chief executive Ricardo Lacerda, previously of Citi and Goldman Sachs in Brazil.

Equity Bank has been involved in healthcare provision in Kenya since 2015, when it established Equity Afia as an integrated, scalable and sustainable healthcare delivery model through its nonprofit foundation.

The Covid-19 crisis has emphasized the importance of banks that can stand by their clients and bring them funding in the toughest times. Euromoney’s best bank for financing in Western Europe, BNP Paribas, has stepped up to a greater extent than peers, especially on a pan-European level – although its achievements this year go beyond the coronavirus response.

Cyprus’s strict approach to tackling the coronavirus has meant the health crisis has been much less severe there than in many other states in Europe.

Ghana’s banking sector went through severe challenges in 2018 after the central bank’s asset quality review in 2017 revealed several structural challenges, including poor corporate governance, poor risk-management practices and regulatory non-compliance.

It was a year of milestones for Morgan Stanley in sustainability, a journey that began in 2013 with the establishment of the Sustainable Investing Institute under Audrey Choi, the bank’s chief sustainability officer.

No investment bank has a greater reach in central America and the Caribbean region than Citi.

Clients of transactions services want simplicity and speed, neither of which is easy for companies operating in regulatory cumbersome and often tech-light jurisdictions of Latin America.

Across sustainable finance and microfinance, BBVA is working to support greener and more inclusive economies. It wins the award for best bank in Latin America for sustainable finance.

Quantity was never in doubt with Citi – every year, its capital markets team churn out the deals. When it adds quality to the mix, and an ability to innovate, it’s unbeatable.

Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) play a unique role in the US, but they were not included in the earliest Covid-19 stimulus packages. So it was vital that big banks helped them to reach those that needed loans the most.

With lockdowns shuttering businesses across the continent, commitment to banking small and medium-sized enterprises has taken on even greater economic and social importance this year.

The Covid-19 pandemic destroyed many of the assumptions underpinning M&A deals under preparation before the outbreak. Therefore it has been vital for advisory banks to shift focus to help clients understand and manage the situation. Much of that is about having built up a well-rounded franchise.

When a big US bank joins its peers around the world under an umbrella of responsible banking, it lifts the entire responsibility agenda – and this is exactly what Citi has done as an early signatory to the Principles of Responsible Banking (PRB) of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.

Few banks have undergone as great a transformation over the last four years as PrivatBank. In December 2016, when it was taken over by the state, Ukraine’s biggest bank held more than a third of the country’s retail deposits and boasted 20 million customers.

Western Europe’s best investment bank, BNP Paribas, is increasingly central to capital markets across the continent. That’s been particularly clear since the onset of the coronavirus crisis.

Canada’s biggest bank is a regular winner of the award for Canada’s best investment bank, but in 2020 it has clocked up another accolade for the first time since 2004.