Pictet and Brown Brothers Harriman topped the Experts table of the latest R&M global custody survey.
Richard Hogsflesh, managing director of R&M Surveys, says the fact that the two firms are partnerships could raise interesting questions for public firms: Does this mean that public companies, with their focus on the short term and their quarterly results, are not best placed to deal with a long tail business such as custody? he says.
He adds: Overall, satisfaction levels have improved but this is what one would expect. Global custody has evolved from the days when stocks and shares were in physical form, held in the safe and overseas trades were communicated by telex. Today most markets have dematerialized and settlements, income collection and reporting are electronic. Service levels should have improved and should continue to improve. Its all about investment in systems and people.
The overall results show RBC Dexia taking the lead from last years winners, UBS who failed to get a broad enough geographic distribution of responses to qualify this year and saw their scores slump in the areas where they did qualify.
Typically pension funds are the most generous with their scores, which R&M says is the reason Credit Suisse and RBC Dexia achieved a very high average.
Asset managers are the most critical response group, giving UBS a large decline in its score along with J.P. Morgan and HSBC. The biggest improvement was from Citibank.
UK pension funds have been led by Northern Trust, pushing BNY Mellon into second place and with a significant decline in score.
J.P. Morgan performed best in the US pension market, gaining ground to take first place.