Some relatively small, regional Asian banks fared well in a recent client satisfaction survey of more than 12,000 corporate treasury departments in Asia, while some global banks lagged behind.

The Asiamoney Cash Management Survey 2017 seeks to gauge the overall satisfaction levels among bank cash management clients in Asia. With a respondent base of more than 12,000 Asian corporate treasury teams, it's one of the largest surveys carried out in the treasury and cash management space. The respondents were asked to score their satisfaction with their relationship banks from 1 (for poor service) to 5 (exceptional service). An aggregate calculation of these scores from clients was used to give a bank an overall score and place the bank in a ranking. The score of 3 – denoting the bank's services are in line with expectations – was considered to be neutral and perhaps this is a point that could be debated, as fulfilling a client's expectations should perhaps count as a positive performance.

The results of the survey found Fubon, Mizuho and Siam Commercial Bank to be the top three cash management banks across Asia, with high levels of client satisfaction. The next three places went to Singapore’s DBS, Bank of China and UOB.

The findings noted that global banks did less well in Asia, with HSBC placed at number seven in the overall ranking. The survey write-up notes that global banks tend to have “positive overall net client satisfaction ratings”, although some are “only just seen in a favourable light by their Asian regional clients”. Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and BNP Paribas took up the last three places in the top 10.

The survey also noted that three other global banks – Citi, JPMorgan and Standard Chartered – all scored low (but positive) ratings from their Asian clients.

The survey also found that some domestic banks scored low in customer satisfaction across Asia – although in some cases the score from their domestic clients alone was much higher. It also showed low domestic customer satisfaction levels for many Chinese banks, including ICBC, ABC, China Merchants, BoComm and CCB, with Bank of China being an honourable exception.