JP Morgan Scores Highest For Foreign Financial Players In Greater China

Tom Burroughes

20 April 2016

A ranking of financial firms’ business penetration of mainland China, showing their role in managing flows of money into and out of the Asian giant, puts US-listed banking house in pride of place, with Switzerland’s UBS in second spot and France’s BNP Paribas in third.

The gradations are produced by Shanghai-based consultancy Z-Ben Advisors. They measure scores of qualitative and quantitative factors on firms, applying them to more than 100 organisations and based on figures as at the end of 2015. The findings produce an overall index score.

In fourth place is Invesco, fifth is Schroders, sixth is HSBC, seventh is Societe Generale, eighth is BlackRock, ninth is Deutsche Asset Management, and tenth is Prudential Financial.

JP Morgan achieved a top score of 51.1. The overall score is calculated by summing the weighted scores of the three distinct business lines. The highest possible overall score that any firm can get is 100, which would result from being the highest ranked firm in not only all three categories, but in every subcategory. The ranking examines the range and distributional capacities of these firms.

Firms are ranked on how they have built three business lines: “onshore”, “outbound” and “inbound”. The onshore market examines how firms build a wealth management capability in China; the offshore segment looks at how firms cater to desire among mainland China investors to park money outside the country, and inshore examines the business of managing flows into mainland China from places such as neighbouring Hong Kong.

Not all firms want to build out all these business lines and some have chosen to specialise, but Z-Ben said only five of the top 25 firms generate more than 90 per cent of their total score from one category.