About the ranking

There is no shortage of coverage of digital banks today. However, most lack a clear and specific definition of a digital bank as well as a set of objective and transparent criteria to assess and rank them. This annual ranking aims to address this gap by assessing them on a more consolidated and consistent global perspective.

The World’s Top 100 Digital Banks Ranking focuses on the most successful first and second-generation digital banks, along with non-bank financial institutions offering banking-like solutions, all of which operate independently of traditional commercial banks and deliver a unique virtual customer experience.

We include digital banks that have very limited physical outlets or hubs. The differentiation to traditional banks is that the physical location is integral to the experience of its digital users, are non-transactional and do not serve non-digital customers. We also include digital banking services of commercial banks only if they are stand-alone operations or subsidiaries. While majority owned by commercial banks, this type of digital banks has separate brands, onboarding processes, products and services that are designed only for their unique users/customers and are not available to other customers of their parent banks. This is different from mobile digital banking apps which can be used by all customers of the parent banks.

The Evaluation Criteria

The scorecard assessment covers capabilities mapped across five key dimensions: customer experience, market/product coverage, profitability, asset and deposit growth and funding. Scale and size are not the main determinant, and are balanced with profitability, operational efficiencies, the ability to raise funds and the way these digital banks grow a healthy loan book and balance sheet.