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JPMorgan wins Euromoney’s award for excellence in providing clients with financing.

Last year’s winner of best for markets in Africa – Standard Bank – was unable to hold off competition from Standard Chartered this year. With its 56 people-strong Africa sales team and trading team of 28 – making it the largest on the ground – Standard Chartered was difficult to beat.

Angola’s economy continues to suffer from low oil prices, a poorly functioning system of government and the influence of the state on the private sector.

It is hard to find a more thoughtful bank in central and eastern Europe than Poland’s Bank Millennium, which is why this year it wins the award for best bank for corporate social responsibility (CSR). The bank provides full transparency around its objectives and actions to bring socially responsible banking to clients, employees, investors and society. For clients, two of the chief aims have been to focus on disabilities and financial exclusion.

Every bank in Africa is going digital, or at least saying that it is. Ecobank’s claims were certainly not empty statements as the pan-African bank demonstrated, for example, by launching a new mobile application in 2016. Ecobank is this year’s worthy winner of best digital bank in Africa.

Years of cutting costs, simplifying structures, settling litigation and plugging holes in its coverage have brought one bank to the position where it is now firing on all cylinders across pretty much all of its US business portfolio. ‘Responsible growth’ is the guiding mantra for Bank of America chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan, and his success in putting those words into practice is why his firm is Euromoney’s best bank in the US. Moynihan might not be the flashiest of bank chiefs, but he knows his bank and he knows what clients in its home market want from it. His focus on building up the firm’s core middle-market franchise has borne fruit – not just in increased business loans but also on coverage more broadly. He drove the creation of deeper regional structures within the US, led by ‘market presidents’ who take personal responsibility for coordinating the bank’s activities across the country.

European banks announced numerous investment pledges in digital banking over the last year. The best banks see technology not as a threat but as an opportunity to grow. They are partnering with and investing in fintech disrupters.

Last year’s winner of the newly minted award for financing in Africa was Citi, and Citi again did well in the last 12 months. But Absa wins the award this time round, thanks in large part to its impressive work in South Africa.

Over the last year Latin American politics has bubbled over to dominate the region’s economies. Venezuela has been brought close to the edge of collapse by a dysfunctional populist regime that clings to power through the continuing loyalty of its military. The failure of Venezuela’s neighbours to produce a regional response to president Nicolas Maduro’s increasingly repressive regime reflects widespread problems of their own.

The winner of the best digital bank award is Bancolombia. Its investment in its digital strategy paid off last year and its customers – across all banking segments – embraced the functionality, praised its intuitive performance and, above all, migrated to the internet, ATM and mobile apps.

For almost 50 years, Euromoney has been the leading publication for covering the growth of international finance. Over the past 12 months its coverage has included interviews with close to 100 bank CEOs, ministers of finance and central bank governors around the world.

A seventh year of record earnings in the fiscal period 2016 – and a first half of 2017 that promises another blockbuster year – saw TD Bank prove yet again that it is the franchise to beat in Canada. The firm’s unrivalled breadth and depth secure it Euromoney’s best bank in Canada award for another year.