Asia's banks need to lift service levels to their institutional customers or face an increasing risk of losing them, according to the latest research from industry specialists East & Partners. Their twice yearly Asian Institutional Transaction Banking Markets report survey of 1000 of Asia's top corporate across ten Asian banking markets showed that:

• Asian customers are showing an increasing readiness to switch banks, with 42.1 percent saying a change in their primary transaction banker was either definite, highly probable or possible over the next six months. This figure rose from 37.9 percent in the previous research from May 2012
• increasing importance of key service attributes such as understanding a customer's business and understanding a customer's industry
• although customer service is important, the main reason for changing corporates to change banks were:
  • improved debt offerings and securities
  • lack of added value in the relationship
  • value for money and lack of competitive pricing.

The East & Partners research also showed that the market shares for the primary transaction banking relationships in Asia (excluding Japan) were:

• Standard Chartered = 21%
• HSBC = 19.6%
• Citigroup = 12.6%
• DBS = 9.6%
• J.P. Morgan = 7.6%
• Bank of China = 7.4%
• Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, UOB, and OCBC make up the remainder of the top ten.