Best bank: BGL BNP Paribas
For a small economy, Luxembourg boasts many banks: 120 were authorized in 2023. Many of these primarily serve international clients, in particular providing securities services to institutional investors from across Europe and beyond.
Far fewer serve the domestic economy and fewer still bank all segments of it, ranging from retail customers to wealthy individuals and from lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, to cash management and trade for larger businesses and corporate and investment banking services for the country’s biggest corporations.
As befits a bank in which the state retains a substantial minority stake, BGL BNP Paribas does not just lend to Luxembourg SMEs, it also invests in them. In 2023, it invested €12 million in two-family owned businesses, with a view to helping them grow and plan.
BGL BNPP stands out for the breadth of its offering to the whole of the Luxembourg economy. And after a year in which it laid the first stone on a 18,500 square metre, state-of-the-art new head office in Luxembourg-Kirchberg that will open in 2025, it once again wins Euromoney’s award as the best bank in Luxembourg.
In a tough year, when the Luxembourg economy shrank by 1%, BGL BNPP performed strongly. It grew net banking income by 9% in 2023, mainly thanks to improvements in retail and corporate banking, where it managed to increase loans even as the economy slowed and unemployment picked up. Gross operating income was 11% higher than in 2022. It kept cost of risk low at just 0.26%.
The bank has invested to digitalize and simplify client journeys. New features in 2023 include an online personal loan simulator that allows customers to calculate their own borrowing capacity more easily. It now also provides an account aggregator for those local customers that have bank accounts in Belgium and France.
To control costs, the bank has also engaged with peers in a shared ATM network as well as in know-your-customer management through the i-Hub platform.
Best investment bank: JPMorgan
Only in investment banking does BNP Paribas lag one of its great rivals. JPMorgan is the best investment bank in Luxembourg this year. In 2023, it commanded a 15% share of the country’s rather modest investment banking revenue wallet, more than twice that of second-ranked BNPP.
Though it did not head all the individual category rankings by volume, JPMorgan showed a strength across the board in M&A, equity capital markets, debt capital markets and loans that no rival could match.
