United National Corporation, a large US community bank, maintained its top spot for return on assets (ROA) by improving its ratio from 14.80% to 16.38%. For the second year in a row, it is the only bank in the Top 1000 World Banks ranking to achieve a double-digit ROA.
Compatriot, Texas-headquartered Beal Bank, has the second-highest ROA ratio at 8.04%, a significant jump from the last time the bank made the table in 2019, when its ROA was 2.53%.
Rounding out the overall top five banks are Banco de Fomento Angola with an ROA of 5.94%, the US’s Discover Financial Services with 4.94% and Russia’s Tinkoff Bank with 4.81%.Â
Kazakhstan’s Halyk Bank achieved an ROA of 3.82%, giving it the top slot for the Asia-Pacific (excluding China and Japan) ROA table. None of the five Chinese banks were able to break the 2% mark in ROA; XW Bank was the leader with an ROA of 1.61%. In Japan, Seven Bank was the only bank to achieve a better ratio than 1% for the second year in a row; this year, it recorded a ratio of 1.69%.
Rounding out the rest of the regional rankings, in western Europe OakNorth Bank in the UK tops the table with a 2.81%, whereas Schroders has dropped from first place last year to second place in the table, even though it improved its ratio to 2.56%. Mexico’s Banco Inbursa posted the highest ROA in the Latam and Caribbean region (3.48%), and Bank Pasargad in Iran topped the Middle Eastern table with an ROA of 4.35%, followed by compatriot Karafarin Bank (3.4%).Â
Liz Lumley is deputy editor at The Banker.
She is a global specialist commentator on global financial technology or ‘fintech’. She has spent over 20 years working in the financial technology space, most recently as director at VC Innovations and architect of the Fintech Talents Festival, managing director at Startupbootcamp FinTech London and an editor at financial services and technology newswire, Finextra.
She was named Journalist of the Year for Technology and Digital Finance at State Street’s UK Press Awards for 2022.