Asian banks made its way to the top 20 international bank brands of the year 2011, highlighting how they have so far bested the global financial turmoil and their future potential, the latest Banking 500 Report said.

China's banks led by China Construction Bank, ICBC, Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China made their way to the Brand Finance's International Banking 500 Report top 20 edging their European counterpart in terms of strong financials, higher potentials as against their competitors all over the world.

The top spot, however, went to British banking giant Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank (HSBC), which also banked on the increasing growth of emerging markets led by the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) nations.

HSBC, captured the top spot and given the triple-A rating for its brand in 2012. Other European banking institutions that made it to the top ten bank brands are France's BNP Paribas and Spain's Banco Santander, getting the number 8 and number 4 rankings, respectively.

The Banking 500 Report, has been known to be unforgiving in terms of mistakes done by financial institutions during the year. The American banks were downgraded in the survey led by the Bank of America last year. It slipped from the top spot and other American banks led by Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citi Group and American Express secured spots in the top ten brands in the banking finance institutions arena and by far been had been coping well in spite the financial turmoil felt globally.

First published in 2006, "the Banking 500 study can help shed light on how a company and its headquarters country are recovering from the financial crisis," Brand Finance chief executive David Haigh said in a statement.