World’s Best Banks 2023: Global Winners

Our annual picks for the best of the best worldwide in key corporate and consumer segments.

The slowdown of the global economy and the war in Ukraine are creating uncertainty and volatility in the global markets, piling pressure on banks’ profits. Add climate change as a long-term risk—further threatening increased financial market volatility from more frequent natural disasters.

Increasing competition from fintechs, rising regulatory compliance costs, cybersecurity threats and changing customer expectations require banks to invest in new technologies and attract and retain top talent to remain competitive.

While the banking crisis, which began in March 2023 with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, has passed, the stress in financial markets remains. Hence, banks need to carefully manage these challenges to stay profitable and sustainable in the future. This is not the time to batten down the hatches—it’s more important than ever that banks invest in technologies to transform their operations and meet customer needs.

This year’s World’s Best Bank award winner, Bank of America, which spent more than $11 billion on technology in 2022, highlights the need for banks to focus on the stability, resilience and security of their platforms to help cope with volatility. “The increased dependency between banks, clients and the market as a whole requires greater operational resilience,” explains Andrew McKibben, International Head of Technology & Operations at Bank of America. “If you get the fundamentals right, you can focus on more significant and transformational enhancements for your clients.”

A strong emphasis on innovation ensures BBVA, the winner of the World’s Best Corporate Bank and Best Global Foreign Exchange Bank awards, can support client needs. With a strong presence in Europe and Latin America, BBVA places a lot of emphasis on ensuring that its corporate and investment banking division is local, international, digital and sustainable.

“In the dynamic landscape of foreign exchange markets, technology has progressively been transforming how corporate clients manage their currency-related risks and transactions,” says Luis Martins, head of Global Macro at BBVA Corporate & Investment Banking.

“One of the most groundbreaking advancements is the emergence of AI-driven predictive analytics and algorithmic trading platforms. These offer corporate clients advanced tools to navigate the complexities of the foreign exchange (FX) markets by enhancing decision-making, reducing risks, optimizing trading strategies, and ultimately helping companies achieve more efficient and cost-effective FX operations.”

Additionally, he notes that cloud-based treasury management systems are gaining prominence among multinationals, streamlining FX exposure monitoring and allowing seamless collaboration among teams across geographies. “Therefore, integrating seamlessly with them is an important objective for BBVA. These systems offer real-time visibility into global financial positions, facilitating smarter hedging strategies and minimizing exposure to volatile currency fluctuations.”

BBVA worked extensively to digitize FX options to catch up to other products, Martins adds. “This effort has also improved our offer of short-term yield enhancement FX-linked structured products, which have become more relevant in the current interest rate environment.”

In summary, Martins says the most innovative technologies in the foreign exchange markets empower corporate clients with enhanced data analysis, efficient payment solutions, and improved risk management, ultimately ensuring smoother and more profitable international transactions.

WORLD’S BEST CASH MANAGEMENT BANK

Citi

The demise of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank earlier this year, coupled with high interest rates, are concentrating corporate treasurers’ attention on protecting their cash. Some are looking to tame counterparty risk by diversifying their deposits among multiple banks while further centralizing cash management across the organization in order to gain better visibility and thus greater efficiency and tighter control of their cash positions.

Cybercurrency theft and cyber-attacks loom as major risks; payment hubs and in-house banks offer more direct control of payment execution, but also promise better fraud detection via payments process controls. At the same time, treasurers and cash managers are looking to technologies such as AI to help them improve cash forecasting and get ahead of liquidity and counterparty risk.

Citi is addressing the demand for greater control by offering a real-time liquidity-sharing capability that automates and optimizes the use of net available balances dispersed across multiple entities and accounts. It also provides virtual lending and borrowing between pool accounts via a single global platform with automated liquidity controls and other limit-setting capacities. —EL

CEO – Jane Fraser

www.citigroup.com

BEST TRADE FINANCE PROVIDER

BNY Mellon

BNY Mellon has made significant investments in emerging technology solutions—such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and optical character recognition—to bring greater levels of automation and reduce the risk and effort related to existing processes within the trade finance process.

“Our agile approach to optimizing traditional trade finance products is what stands out this year. For instance, our new hybrid outsourcing offering is helping to solve clients’ major pain point areas such as technology implementation costs. Our clients can access our portal service and our full outsourcing offering without fully integrating the whole back-office system,” states Joon Kim, Global Head of Trade Finance Product & Portfolio Group, BNY Mellon Treasury Services.

“Elsewhere, we are leveraging our robust correspondent banking coverage—and our position as a largely unconflicted provider—to create and offer various risk mitigation services for clients to expand reach as well as consider a flexible global supply chain financing program with short implementation times.” By offering trade outsourcing capabilities to other banks, BNY Mellon helps them avoid the high costs of contracting with a third-party trade platform whilst allowing them to benefit from a state-of-the-art, customizable trade portal, BNY Mellon’s extensive global network, trade expertise, and contingency planning infrastructure to enhance their trade service offerings. —GW

CEO – Mal Cullen

cibcmellon.com

WORLD’S BEST SUPPLY CHAIN FINANCE PROVIDER

Bank of America

Having offered SCF as a core solution for clients for the past decade, last year Bank of America made enhancements in CashPro Trade to include SCF APIs, ESG-linked Trade and SCF, new Trade Receivable Finance and Trade Risk Purchase modules and a Third-Party Module and channels, which can be integrated via either API or host-to-host to connect clients’ platform with CashPro Trade.

In 2022, a Supplier Enablement Portal (SEP) was rolled out in all regions to enable the speedy onboarding of suppliers across the whole supply chain. In addition to an online portal

SEP includes advanced data analytics software, powered by AI, personalized microsites for suppliers with information, such as a calculator to gauge financial benefits and real-time supplier status reports, to enable tracking of onboarding.

BofA is also involved in two pilots with the distributed ledger, Marco Polo Network. One is focussed on digitalizing the end-to-end procure-to-pay process by facilitating the flow of information and funds seamlessly within a private DLT system. The second combines artificial intelligence, DLT and digital verification databases to unlock the ability to on-board the entire supplier base and scale programs at speed. —GW

CEO – Brian Moynihan

www.bankofamerica.com

WORLD’S BEST FOREIGN EXCHANGE PROVIDER

BBVA

BBVA boasts a strong global network—providing its customers, who include individuals, SME’s, corporates and investors with access to foreign exchange markets in over 100 countries.

To help SMEs cope with today’s high inflation and interest-rate environment, BBVA has been particularly active in ensuring that smaller clients use FX derivatives for hedging purposes. Speaking with Global Finance earlier in the year, Luis Martins, head of Global Macro at BBVA, said this involves providing necessary credit so they can trade without any liquidity requirements, launching some online hedging tools for clients to simulate potential scenarios and hedging strategies and making FX instruments available electronically for easy and fast execution.

BBVA has also adopted technologies, such as SWIFT GO, FX Net Cash and BBVA eMarkets. BBVA was one of the first ten banks in the world to join SWIFT GO and was the first bank to launch it in Spain, Mexico, Peru and Turkey. With 85% of payments completed in three minutes or less, SWIFT GO aims to be a solution for low-value payments and help streamline the collection of payment for services to cross-border clients for SMEs.

BBVA posted record revenues for the first half of 2023, with year-on-year growth of 48%. Of merit was growth for Global Markets, highlighting the FX business in all geographies where BBVA operates, with an extraordinary contribution from emerging markets. Also noteworthy is the excellent performance of BBVA’s rates business in South America and growth in the US. —GW

CEO – Onur Genç

www.bbva.com

WORLD’S BEST PRIVATE BANK

J.P. Morgan Private Bank

A multiyear Global Finance award winner, J.P. Morgan, with client assets of $2.1 trillion, again takes the title of World’s Best Private Bank. That places it in a premier position in a heady business that is expected to grow dramatically; Cerulli Associates has calculated that wealth transferred through 2045 will total a staggering $84.4 trillion, including $72.6 trillion in assets passing to heirs and $11.9 trillion donated to charities.

J.P. Morgan is positioning itself for private banking as a more global business. Last year, it announced plans to double the headcount in its European and MENA operations and also grow its headcount in Asia, which boasts one of the world’s fastest growing contingents of very high and ultra-high net worth clients, by 100. In July, it launched a new US Family Office Practice with 150 specialists including in tax planning, estate, and cybersecurity.

“Our clients are looking for highly customized solutions, innovative digital services, and resources to address the growing complexities of multi-generational wealth,” Andrew L. Cohen, executive chair of J.P. Morgan Global Private Bank, said in a statement at the time. “The launch of this practice will provide a robust solution set for family offices across the wealth spectrum.”

J.P. Morgan is also sharpening its technological edge. Over the past two years, it has bought two fintech firms, OpenInvest and Global Shares, and invested in two others, Edge Laboratories and Evooq, Swiss firms that specialize in analyzing risk and customizing portfolios for wealthy clients. —EL

CEO – David Frame

privatebank.jpmorgan.com

WORLD’S BEST SME BANK

BTG Pactual Empresas

Few areas of financial services are as ripe for digital transformation as banking for small and mid-sized enterprises. A little over three years ago, Brazil’s BTG Pactual set up a new operating arm, BTG Pactual Empresas, to serve smaller business. Since then, the unit has lent BRL130 billion to SMEs—16% of the bank’s total credit portfolio. It balances the innovation and agility of a startup with the range and capabilities of an established brick-and-mortar bank.

BTGP Empresas attributes its rapid success in attracting platform users, new SME clients, and new partners to its fully online onboarding process; multichannel customer support; as well as payroll, federal tax accounting, and other offerings.

The digital bank has integrated its business and technology teams, giving its developers a deeper understanding of customers. A strong network of early-adopter customers provides feedback at all stages of product development. Last year, it partnered with a startup to introduce a tool that estimates past crop yields and predicts future performance for farmers via satellite data analysis. —EL

CEO – Roberto Sallouti

ri.btgpactual.com

A cloud-based microservices-based architecture, meanwhile, is helping Citi, which took home the World’s Best Transaction Bank award, to be flexible enough to handle greater payment volumes and types while handling real-time processing and data demands. The CitiDirect banking and cash management platform is now nimble enough to meet clients’ fast-changing banking and transaction needs by replacing a legacy framework of tightly coupled applications with a flexible, cloud-capable, microservices-based modular structure.

BNY Mellon, the World’s Best Trade Finance Provider award winner, has invested in emerging technology solutions, including artificial intelligence, machine learning and optical character recognition, to help unlock greater levels of automation and reduce the risk and effort related to trade finance processes.

Bank of America, which also won the World’s Best Supply Chain Finance Provider award, has committed $1 trillion to support sustainable finance by 2030. This includes embedding ESG (environmental, social, and governance) within its trade & SCF offerings.

Standard Chartered, the Outstanding Global Leadership in Sustainable Finance winner, has committed to invest $300 billion in green and transition finance by 2030. With a strong presence in emerging markets, where climate change, inequality and other threats present real challenges, Standard Chartered offers ESG products to clients and provides them with the necessary information to make informed decisions.

This year’s World’s Best Consumer Bank award winner, DBS, sends 45 million hyper-personalized nudges monthly to Singapore consumers with suggestions on making their money work harder. Meanwhile, a partnership with The Sandbox to create DBS BetterWorld, an interactive metaverse experience, will help showcase the importance of ESG issues.

Innovation is not limited to the virtual world; DBS launched a Managing Through Journeys (MtJs) program where the customer is the cornerstone of delivering outcomes. “Innovation is embedded in our new way of working,” says Han Kwee Juan, group executive and country head of DBS Singapore. “With MtJs, cross-functional teams comprising product, sales, marketing, technology, data science and operations focus on delivering a differentiated customer experience through experimentation and innovation. Through continuous discovery within MtJs, teams innovate with customers on new services and products. This enables DBS to launch new services and solutions that are seamless and joyful for customers, fulfilling our promise of ‘Live More, Bank Less.’”

Banks can stay ahead of the curve by investing in new technologies like AI, blockchain, and cloud computing while providing customers with more convenient and personalized services.

Digital transformation alleviates the negative impact of macroeconomic uncertainty. Despite the downturn, this year’s Best Banks have proved that investing in technology is helping them to drive change and continual improvement—even during difficult times. They will be in a more favorable position when the upturn arrives.

Methodology: Behind the Rankings

The editors of Global Finance, with input from industry analysts, corporate executives and technology experts, selected the global winners for the World’s Best Banks 2023 using information provided by entrants as well as independent research based on objective and subjective factors.

Entries are not required, but experience shows that the information supplied in an entry can increase the chance of success. In many cases, entrants present details that may not be readily available to the editors.

Judges considered performance from January 1 to June 30, 2023. Global Finance applies a proprietary algorithm to shorten the list of contenders and arrive at a numerical score, with 100 signifying perfection. The algorithm weights a range of criteria for relative importance, including: knowledge of the sector, market conditions and customer needs, financial strength and safety, strategic relationships and governance, capital investment and innovation; scope of global coverage; size and experience of staff; risk management; range of products and services; and use of technology. The panel tends to favor private-sector banks over government-owned institutions.

The winners are those banks and providers that best serve the specialized needs of corporations engaged in global business.

WORLD’S BEST CASH MANAGEMENT BANK

Citi

The demise of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank earlier this year, coupled with high interest rates, are concentrating corporate treasurers’ attention on protecting their cash. Some are looking to tame counterparty risk by diversifying their deposits among multiple banks while further centralizing cash management across the organization in order to gain better visibility and thus greater efficiency and tighter control of their cash positions.

Cybercurrency theft and cyber-attacks loom as major risks; payment hubs and in-house banks offer more direct control of payment execution, but also promise better fraud detection via payments process controls. At the same time, treasurers and cash managers are looking to technologies such as AI to help them improve cash forecasting and get ahead of liquidity and counterparty risk.

Citi is addressing the demand for greater control by offering a real-time liquidity-sharing capability that automates and optimizes the use of net available balances dispersed across multiple entities and accounts. It also provides virtual lending and borrowing between pool accounts via a single global platform with automated liquidity controls and other limit-setting capacities. —EL

CEO – Jane Fraser

www.citigroup.com

BEST TRADE FINANCE PROVIDER

BNY Mellon

BNY Mellon has made significant investments in emerging technology solutions—such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and optical character recognition—to bring greater levels of automation and reduce the risk and effort related to existing processes within the trade finance process.

“Our agile approach to optimizing traditional trade finance products is what stands out this year. For instance, our new hybrid outsourcing offering is helping to solve clients’ major pain point areas such as technology implementation costs. Our clients can access our portal service and our full outsourcing offering without fully integrating the whole back-office system,” states Joon Kim, Global Head of Trade Finance Product & Portfolio Group, BNY Mellon Treasury Services.

“Elsewhere, we are leveraging our robust correspondent banking coverage—and our position as a largely unconflicted provider—to create and offer various risk mitigation services for clients to expand reach as well as consider a flexible global supply chain financing program with short implementation times.” By offering trade outsourcing capabilities to other banks, BNY Mellon helps them avoid the high costs of contracting with a third-party trade platform whilst allowing them to benefit from a state-of-the-art, customizable trade portal, BNY Mellon’s extensive global network, trade expertise, and contingency planning infrastructure to enhance their trade service offerings. —GW

CEO – Mal Cullen

cibcmellon.com

WORLD’S BEST SUPPLY CHAIN FINANCE PROVIDER

Bank of America

Having offered SCF as a core solution for clients for the past decade, last year Bank of America made enhancements in CashPro Trade to include SCF APIs, ESG-linked Trade and SCF, new Trade Receivable Finance and Trade Risk Purchase modules and a Third-Party Module and channels, which can be integrated via either API or host-to-host to connect clients’ platform with CashPro Trade.

In 2022, a Supplier Enablement Portal (SEP) was rolled out in all regions to enable the speedy onboarding of suppliers across the whole supply chain. In addition to an online portal

SEP includes advanced data analytics software, powered by AI, personalized microsites for suppliers with information, such as a calculator to gauge financial benefits and real-time supplier status reports, to enable tracking of onboarding.

BofA is also involved in two pilots with the distributed ledger, Marco Polo Network. One is focussed on digitalizing the end-to-end procure-to-pay process by facilitating the flow of information and funds seamlessly within a private DLT system. The second combines artificial intelligence, DLT and digital verification databases to unlock the ability to on-board the entire supplier base and scale programs at speed. —GW

CEO – Brian Moynihan

www.bankofamerica.com

WORLD’S BEST FOREIGN EXCHANGE PROVIDER

BBVA

BBVA boasts a strong global network—providing its customers, who include individuals, SME’s, corporates and investors with access to foreign exchange markets in over 100 countries.

To help SMEs cope with today’s high inflation and interest-rate environment, BBVA has been particularly active in ensuring that smaller clients use FX derivatives for hedging purposes. Speaking with Global Finance earlier in the year, Luis Martins, head of Global Macro at BBVA, said this involves providing necessary credit so they can trade without any liquidity requirements, launching some online hedging tools for clients to simulate potential scenarios and hedging strategies and making FX instruments available electronically for easy and fast execution.

BBVA has also adopted technologies, such as SWIFT GO, FX Net Cash and BBVA eMarkets. BBVA was one of the first ten banks in the world to join SWIFT GO and was the first bank to launch it in Spain, Mexico, Peru and Turkey. With 85% of payments completed in three minutes or less, SWIFT GO aims to be a solution for low-value payments and help streamline the collection of payment for services to cross-border clients for SMEs.

BBVA posted record revenues for the first half of 2023, with year-on-year growth of 48%. Of merit was growth for Global Markets, highlighting the FX business in all geographies where BBVA operates, with an extraordinary contribution from emerging markets. Also noteworthy is the excellent performance of BBVA’s rates business in South America and growth in the US. —GW

CEO – Onur Genç

www.bbva.com

WORLD’S BEST PRIVATE BANK

J.P. Morgan Private Bank

A multiyear Global Finance award winner, J.P. Morgan, with client assets of $2.1 trillion, again takes the title of World’s Best Private Bank. That places it in a premier position in a heady business that is expected to grow dramatically; Cerulli Associates has calculated that wealth transferred through 2045 will total a staggering $84.4 trillion, including $72.6 trillion in assets passing to heirs and $11.9 trillion donated to charities.

J.P. Morgan is positioning itself for private banking as a more global business. Last year, it announced plans to double the headcount in its European and MENA operations and also grow its headcount in Asia, which boasts one of the world’s fastest growing contingents of very high and ultra-high net worth clients, by 100. In July, it launched a new US Family Office Practice with 150 specialists including in tax planning, estate, and cybersecurity.

“Our clients are looking for highly customized solutions, innovative digital services, and resources to address the growing complexities of multi-generational wealth,” Andrew L. Cohen, executive chair of J.P. Morgan Global Private Bank, said in a statement at the time. “The launch of this practice will provide a robust solution set for family offices across the wealth spectrum.”

J.P. Morgan is also sharpening its technological edge. Over the past two years, it has bought two fintech firms, OpenInvest and Global Shares, and invested in two others, Edge Laboratories and Evooq, Swiss firms that specialize in analyzing risk and customizing portfolios for wealthy clients. —EL

CEO – David Frame

privatebank.jpmorgan.com

WORLD’S BEST SME BANK

BTG Pactual Empresas

Few areas of financial services are as ripe for digital transformation as banking for small and mid-sized enterprises. A little over three years ago, Brazil’s BTG Pactual set up a new operating arm, BTG Pactual Empresas, to serve smaller business. Since then, the unit has lent BRL130 billion to SMEs—16% of the bank’s total credit portfolio. It balances the innovation and agility of a startup with the range and capabilities of an established brick-and-mortar bank.

BTGP Empresas attributes its rapid success in attracting platform users, new SME clients, and new partners to its fully online onboarding process; multichannel customer support; as well as payroll, federal tax accounting, and other offerings.

The digital bank has integrated its business and technology teams, giving its developers a deeper understanding of customers. A strong network of early-adopter customers provides feedback at all stages of product development. Last year, it partnered with a startup to introduce a tool that estimates past crop yields and predicts future performance for farmers via satellite data analysis. —EL

CEO – Roberto Sallouti

ri.btgpactual.com

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