Global Custodian is pleased to announce the start of a consultation phase as part of a broad overhaul of its Agent Bank surveys in 2021. Based on feedback from leading participants, Global Custodian has redesigned its Agent Bank survey questionnaires to simplify completion – focusing on core elements and allowing participants more choice in the detailed feedback that they share. 
The overhaul is focused on improving the survey’s usability, confirming its neutrality and enhancing its value as a business management tool for the industry. To this end, Global Custodian has entered into a partnership with Toronto-based research, benchmarking and sales enablement company, theValueExchange to provide live data analytics and actionable insights that turn the survey responses into essential management information.
The questionnaire includes a scorecard, allowing respondents to rate each category on a seven-point scale from Unacceptable to Excellent, with all subsequent questions optional and designed to allow the respondent to add supportive comment to their ratings. The published results rate each service provider in each category as well as their overall average per market, represented both on Global Custodian’s traditional scale of 1-7 and as a percentage.
In parallel, Global Custodian will be establishing an industry advisory group to oversee the independence of the survey’s data results, drawing on global industry expertise to assess and digest the survey information.
“As these are customer perception surveys, it is important for the sake of accuracy that the response base reflect the spread of clients of each provider and that both respondents and rated providers have confidence that the published results are data-driven,” said Richard Schwartz, head of research, Global Custodian.
Through the partnership with theValueExchange, industry participants will be able to subscribe to personalised, interactive dashboards that deliver graphic data insights to support business decisions. “The Global Custodian Surveys are a unique tool for buyers and sellers of custody services to engage,” said Barnaby Nelson, founder and CEO, theValueExchange. “We are excited to be turning that engagement into personalised, statistical insights that can help network managers to manage their agent bank risk and agent banks to enhance their solutions based on direct market feedback.”
Jon Watkins, editor, Global Custodian and CEO, Tungsten Publishing Ltd, added: “In an era of increased counterparty due diligence and oversight, the role of the Global Custodian Agent Bank surveys has never been more important. As the leading industry platform for peer-based reviews and feedback, the surveys play an essential role in driving transparency between network managers and agent banks.”
Global Custodian will continue to offer official digital accreditation for outperformance in the surveys, based on the published results, as well as more granular data files to support the survey conclusions.
The consultation phase on the survey questionnaire will run to May 15th with a planned launch date in June for the survey itself.
For more information contact:
beenish.hussain@globalcustodian.com, richard.schwartz@globalcustodian.com