Turkish banks are following the lead of the country’s vibrant export sector and expanding into new regional markets, but their strategies vary widely.

Hit hard by regulation and declining revenues, banks have been forced into scaling back their operations, leaving a gap that their non-bank counterparts have been quick to fill.

Efforts by the Kuwaiti government to boost the country’s sluggish economic growth have so far proven ineffective, leaving its banks to look towards the rest of the Middle East and north Africa for growth opportunities.

Armed with deep pools of liquidity, many Middle Eastern banks are exploring new avenues of growth, from expanding their regional presence to concentrating on innovation within the Islamic finance sphere.

Angola’s banks are likely to grow faster than any others in Africa over the next decade, and they are also among the continent’s most profitable. But they will have to start innovating as increased competition and new regulations look set to make their presence felt.

Morocco wants to establish Casablanca as a financial hub not only for investment into the rest of north Africa, but countries south of the Sahara too. So far, it has made good progress and is pulling ahead of its regional rivals. 

The regulations implementing the Dodd-Frank Act, which was signed into US law in 2010 in response to the G-20's global financial regulatory reform agenda, are being written, and banks do not like what they see.

The state of China’s banks is a divisive topic – are they on the brink of collapse or part of a stable, state-controlled system? The country's financial institutions are reporting high profits and deposits, but with unquantified levels of bad debt, concerns over asset quality and overexposure to a weakening property market, questions are being asked about the long-term health of the sector.

Loans are up, deposits are growing and profits are healthy in Saudi Arabia's banks. But with growth opportunities in Islamic finance and a low proportion of home ownership in the country, there are still many more lucrative areas for these institutions to tap.