India's Best Banks 2013 : BT Survey Results
Its an annual exercise, or I may say ritual. Now a days, even RBI compiles the profiles of all commercial banks in public, private and foreign category with their respective business data, efficiency indicators in comparison to the industry averages. Around November every year, RBI also brings out a comprehensive book titled "Trend and Progress of Banking in India", in which the economy, banking and finance world scenario is presented. 'Profile of Banks in India' helps the reader, be a student, banker or a researcher to assess the strengths and weaknesses of a bank operating in India. All said and done, unlike corporate companies, banks in India strictly follow or comply with the broad policies or guidelines or norms spelt out by the regulator. There is freedom for the banks to fix their own rates of interest on deposits and lendings, while taking care of Risk Management, Asset Liability Management and Basel Committee obligations.
Each type of banks have their advantages and disadvantages in size, age, location, manpower, stage of automation, board and governance styles, presence abroad, etc. The results announced by BT for large, medium and small banks on various parameters hardly matter or affect to the banks concerned. Similarly, customers also go by their own preferences to deal with their bankers. This survey results not only compute certain metrics and compare within the three groups as also rank the banks and show the outcomes in comparison to the previous year. SBI, the largest bank in the country, interestingly is ranked at no. 10 (it was at no.7 last year) below its minor counter parts like Syndicate Bank (9), Corporation Bank (8), etc.
I am not too sure who would be using this data - customers - depositors or borrowers or investors.
