Safest 25 Banks In China 2017

CHINA’S BANKS: AA TO BB

Chinese banks run the gamut, from some of the safest in the world to those with ratings deep in sub-investment-grade territory.

The two strongest banks, China Development Bank and Agricultural Development Bank of China, feature in our Global 50 Safest Banks ranking (at 47th and 49th). Export-Import Bank of China narrowly misses placing in the Global 50. We name a further five Chinese banks in our Emerging Markets 50 Safest Banks ranking.

These eight hold ratings in the AA or A range. Below them are four banks that hold ratings in the BBB range. After those come nine banks whose aggregate ratings are on or just below the investment-grade/sub-investment-grade divide, and finally there are four banks with much lower, sub-investment-grade ratings.

Ten of the banks have ratings from all three agencies, six are rated by two, and the remaining nine hold a single rating. When scoring these banks we use the same methodology that we use for scoring our country-by-country list.

Our ranking of Chinese banks sets no minimum asset size for eligibility, since we want to capture all rated Chinese banks. However, in practice, even the smallest bank, Bank of Suzhou, falls comfortably among the largest 500 banks in the world.

METHODOLOGY: The scoring methodology used by Global Finance to rank the Safest Chinese Banks follows that used in its other Safest Banks rankings. A rating of AAA is assigned a score of 10 points, AA+ receives a score of nine points, down to BBB- which scores one point and BB+ which scores -1 point, and so on. When a bank has only two ratings, an implied score for the third rating is calculated by taking the average of the other two and deducting one point. When a bank has only one rating, an implied score for the second rating is calculated by deducting one point from the actual rating, and an implied score for the third rating is calculated by deducting two points from the actual rating.