Beneficial owners are asked to rate the performance of their agent lenders. To acces the survey CLICK HERE

Respondents are asked to rate their agent lenders across 12 service categories (see below) from one (unacceptable) to seven (excellent).

Beneficial Owners Survey will close on Tuesday December 2 at 9.00 a.m.  

METHODOLOGY

There are two methodologies: unweighted and weighted.

Unweighted methodology

All valid responses for each agent lender are averaged to populate unweighted tables. All beneficial owners' responses are given an equal weight, regardless of the size of their lendable portfolio. All categories are given equal weight regardless of how important they are considered to be by respondents. No allowances are made for regional variations.

Weighted methodology

The weighted table methodology makes allowances for both the size of the respondent's lendable portfolio and how important the respondents, on average, consider each category to be. An allowance is also made for differences between average scores in each region to make meaningful global averages.

Step one - weighting for lendable portfolio: A weighting is generated to reflect to the size of the respondent's lendable portfolio. Each respondent is put into a quartile depending on its total lendable portfolio.

The scores of the respondent are then given a weighting based on this quartile. As the boundaries of each quartile are determined by all the responses received in this year's survey, the boundaries are unknown until the survey closes.

Criteria Weighting
AuM in lowest quartile 0.7
AuM in middle two quartiles 1
AuM in the top quartile 1.3

Step two - weighting for importance: An additional allowance is made for how important beneficial owners consider each category to be. This is done to acknowledge the fact that beneficial owners consider some categories to be more important than others.

Respondents are asked to rank each service category in order of how important the function is to them. An average ranking is then calculated for each of the twelve categories (11= highest ranking, 0 = lowest). This number is then divided by 5.5 to give a weighting within a theoretical band between 0 and 2, with an average of one. Again, basing weights around one is done to preserve comparability with unweighted scores.

To illustrate, if every respondent considers category X to be the most important it would get an average rank of 11. This is then divided by 5.5 to provide the weighting for category X, i.e. 11 / 5.5 = 2.

Step three - weighting for regional variation: In the calculation of the global average and global total scores, a final weighting is added to allow for the discrepancy between scores awarded in different regions.

There are two sources of regional variation. Firstly, the average lendable portfolio size is different in each region. Secondly, there is a difference in how generous respondents are when rating their lenders. An adjustment is made because this survey aims to help beneficial owners benchmark lenders against their competitors (otherwise it just tells us that lenders are better in region X than region Y, which is not very helpful for a lender in region X when choosing a lender).

Once the above weightings have been applied to the regional tables, an average score is calculated for each region. A weight for each region is then calculated and applied to scores to make the average score for each region equal.

This means that scores in the region with the highest average ratings will be factored down and the one with the lowest factored up, when calculating the weighted global total and average scores (the region with an average score in the middle could potentially be factored up, down or remain unchanged depending on the data).

TABLES AND SCORES

Overall tables
The overall table contains all responses for a lender regardless of its relationship with the beneficial owner, whether custodial or agent. The following scores are calculated: separately for each region, a global total, a global average and for each service category.

Regional scores are the average of all responses from beneficial owners based in that region (it is the location of the beneficial owner, not the lender, that is the relevant). There are three regions.

A lender must receive a different minimum number of responses to qualify in each: seven in the Americas, five responses in Europe, Middle East and Africa (Emea) and four in Asia Pacific. To qualify globally, a lender must qualify in at least two regions.

Custodial and third-party agent lender tables
Ratings of lenders acting in a custodial or third-party agent lender capacity are recorded in separate tables. The respondent is asked to define their relationship with the lender: custodial, agent or both. If the relationship involves both forms of arrangement, the response counts for both the custodial and agent lender tables.

Therefore, some responses will be included in both the custodial and third-party agent lender tables. All the scores calculated for overall lenders will be replicated for custodial and third-party agent lenders separately.

The qualification criteria is lower for the custodial and agent lender tables compared with overall. To qualify for either the overall custodial and third-party agent lender tables, lenders need five responses in the Americas, four in Emea and three in Asia Pacific.

Most improved
The agent lender that improved its score by the greatest margin over its equivalent 2014 score is the most improved firm. Agent lenders are ineligible if they did not qualify for the 2014 survey.

Service categories
Respondents are asked to rate each of their providers from one to seven across 12 service categories. The ratings of respondents for each service category are averaged to produce the final score for each provider. The service categories are:

• Income generated versus expectation
• Risk management
• Reporting and transparency
• Settlement and responsiveness to recalls
• Handling of corporate actions/dividends
• Collateral management
• Relationship management/client service
• Market coverage (developed markets)
• Market coverage (emerging markets)
• Programme customisation
• Lending programme parameter management
• Provision of market and regulatory updates

To qualify for each service category table, the lender needs the same amount of responses as to qualify for the corresponding main table; i.e., to qualify for an overall, custodian or agent lender service category the lender must qualify in two of the three regions (for example, five responses for that category in the Americas and four in Emea).

A lender can qualify in some categories and not others - it does not have to qualify globally for all service categories to be any particular service category.

VALID RESPONSES

For a response to count for the purposes of qualification, the beneficial owner must rate the lender in no fewer than eight of the 12 service categories (i.e. it can tick n/a in no more than four service categories).