Methodology: How We Picked

Best Banks survey, brought out by Businessworld (BW), with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) providing knowledge support. The survey entails a comprehensive analysis of the scheduled commercial banks operational in India, based on their performance on select parameters over a period of three years, FY2016 to FY2018.

48 scheduled commercial banks (including 21 public sector banks, 21 private sector banks and 6 foreign banks) were identified for a detailed analysis based on the following eligibility criteria:

* In continuous operations for at least last 3 years
* Have a network of at least 5 branches
* A balance sheet size of at least Rs 5000 crore as on 31.3.18

These banks have been categorised into four distinct groups based on their book size to ensure fair identification of merit as of 31st March 2018
* Public & Private sector banks with balance sheet size less than INR 150,000 crore (Small banks)      
* Public & Private sector banks  with balance sheet size INR 150,000 -300,000 crore (Mid sized banks)
* Public & Private sector banks with balance sheet size above INR 300,000 crore (Large size banks)
* Foreign banks with balance sheet size greater than INR 5,000 crore.

Foreign banks are selected separately as they operate under more restricted regulatory conditions. The data used for the analysis is collated from publicly available sources (the RBI, IBA) and Bank Annual Reports. Only 6 foreign banks were considered for evaluation out of 11 eligible banks, as for the other 5 banks, annual reports was not available

For evaluation, each bank was stacked under four primary categories — growth, size, sustainability of operations and risk. Each of these category has several parameters with assigned weights. The banks are ranked on the basis of their performance on each parameter. The aggregate score for each bank is arrived at by multiplying its rank with the assigned weights under each of the four categories. The aggregate score of a bank is thus the sum total of its weighted ranks. Since the scores are derived from the ranks, the banks are arranged in ascending order of their respective scores within their peer group, which determines the overall best bank in each group. In order to determine the fastest-growing bank, the weighted scores for the banks are calculated from the ‘growth’ category.

External panel Assessment/Validation of the analysis
The list of the top five banks in each group, based on their aggregate scores, was presented to an external jury, which deliberated on the analysis of the data, the methodology used and the rankings and decided the list of winners in each group.

The jury took into consideration factors such as base effect, quality and sustainability of growth, efficient use of capital, impact of NPAs and quality of risk management. The deliberations also included qualitative factors like market intelligence, technology and digital initiatives, quality of management and corporate governance, amongst others. After careful deliberation and moderation of the facts collated from the data analysis, the jury came up with the final winner in each category.