This award category benchmarks and recognises best practices in supply chain management that industry players can use and improve upon. The primary assessment is based on the evaluation of the strength of the submissions as well as in-depth interview with senior management staff of the nominated organisations. The Financial Supply Chain Awards are given to the bank(s) and organisation(s) that excel in the respective functions in the countries under evaluation. The detailed evaluation scorecard may be found at http://supplychain.theasianbanker.com.

- Best Supplier Relationship Management
This award recognises the client organisation's ability to plan and manage relationship with its third party suppliers of goods and/or services to maximize the value of these relationship. Key evaluation criteria for the award is the organisation's ability to create close and effective relationships (based on quantitative numbers such as quality and timeliness of delivery) with key suppliers in realise their business needs and reduce risk.

- Best Inventory Management
This award recognises the client organisation's ability to plan and manage its logistics and supply network, warehousing facilities and quality assurance capabilities to ensure that its regular and planned course of production and delivery of goods are well maintained, in quality and quantity. Key evaluation criteria for the award is the quality and operational capability of the organisation's supply, warehousing and quality management functions to ensure timely and quality production and delivery of finished products and services to end users.

- Best Financial Supply Chain Management
This award recognizes the client organization and its partner bank's ability to effectively manage the working capital of the organization. This involves inventory purchases, payment terms with suppliers and discount arrangements with suppliers as well as distributors that will impact its working capital. Key evaluation criteria for the award is the quality and operational capability of the organisation's cash management, treasury and corporate finance function to ensure the liquidity and overall financial position of the organisation.

- Best Balance Sheet Management
This award recognizes the client organization's to with the strongest balance sheet based on six areas: scale of business, balance sheet growth, risk profile, profitability, quality of its earning streams and liquidity.

- Best Know Your Client Infrastructure
This award recognizes the partner bank's customer onboarding and KYC infrastructure to ensure optimum level of identification, verification, and sourcing of documents and screening to not only support timely compliance t ongoing KYC and other regulatory requirements but also ensure overall customer support to its client organisation.

- Best Payment Portal
This award recognizes the partner bank's ability to support the corporate client a single, robust and secure platform for funds transfer and processing and tracking of payment transactions. Key evaluation criteria for the award are consistency, reliability and ability to support multiple-channels. It should support all types of domestic and international, low and high value payments and meets evolving business and regulatory requirements and ability to integrate to the client's ERP solution.

This award category recognises outstanding achievements and best practices in project implementations through which other banks and organisations can learn from. It measures both implementation and sustainable business impact. It identifies the best examples of cooperation between banks and their corporate clients and exemplifies industry-leading innovations. The detailed evaluation scorecard may be found at http://supplychain.theasianbanker.com.