OCBC and DBS Take the Top Two Spots on Forbes’ First Ranking of the World’s Top Performing Banks

In a new global ranking built entirely on financial performance rather than customer surveys, Singapore’s two largest banks came out ahead of names like JPMorgan Chase and HDFC Bank.

OCBC and DBS have taken first and second place respectively among the world’s largest banks in Forbes’ newly launched World’s Top Performing Banks list, published in partnership with Statista on 9 September 2026. The two Singapore headquartered lenders were the only Singapore banks to make the list, and within the top tier reserved for institutions holding more than 500 billion US dollars in assets, they finished ahead of Mumbai’s HDFC Bank, Shenzhen’s China Merchants Bank, and New York’s JPMorgan Chase.

A New Kind of Ranking, Not a Popularity Contest

What makes this list notable is how it was put together. Forbes has long published bank rankings based mainly on customer surveys measuring satisfaction and reputation. This new list takes a different approach entirely, built on financial data, desk research, and information submitted directly by the banks themselves, with the explicit aim of measuring financial performance rather than public perception.

What Actually Got Measured

Banks were assessed across four broad categories, profitability, growth and earnings quality, capital and funding resilience, and asset quality and efficiency. Within those categories, the analysis drew on specific indicators including returns, net interest margins, deposit growth, equity ratios, and loan to deposit ratios, giving the ranking a more quantitative, balance sheet driven foundation than a typical brand or satisfaction survey.

Who Qualified for the List

To be eligible, a bank needed more than 3 billion US dollars in assets and at least three consecutive years of financial data available for analysis. Qualifying banks were then divided into six tiers by asset size, allowing institutions to be compared against genuine peers rather than being measured against banks many times their size. In total, 500 banks across 89 countries made the final list, and Forbes noted that no company paid to participate or to be selected.

Why This Result Matters for Singapore

For a financial centre that has spent years building its reputation on regulatory stability and institutional depth, having both of its major banks lead a global ranking built on hard financial metrics rather than sentiment is a meaningful marker. It reinforces a narrative that has been building around Singapore’s banking sector for some time, that its lenders are not simply well regarded locally, but are genuinely competitive on profitability, resilience, and efficiency against the largest banks anywhere in the world.

What This Means for Businesses and Investors

For asset managers, family offices, and corporates choosing where to bank in Asia, rankings like this one offer an additional, more quantitative data point when assessing counterparty strength, alongside the usual considerations of regulatory oversight, service quality, and relationship depth. A bank’s financial resilience matters just as much as its service offering when it comes to holding client assets, processing capital flows, or supporting a fund’s day to day banking needs.

This article is for general information only and does not constitute financial advice.