The Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards

The Excellence Scorecard is used to evaluate banks on both a country and a regional basis for the Excellence in Retail Financial Services Programme. It is the backbone of the evaluation process and was developed with an eye on one of the key objectives of the programme, which is to create an instrument that is accepted by the player in the retail financial services industry as a viable, objective and representative measure of a bank's performance across multiple areas.

Keeping that in mind, we have made our decision-making process as transparent as possible to help banks understand where they stand as a sustainable retail franchise. Through the scorecard, banks also have the opportunity to re-examine their own products and processes.

Beyond providing us with an opportunity to evaluate and compare banks in the Asia Pacific, Central Asia and the Gulf Region using a standard measure, the scorecard serves as a source of benchmarking and carrying out detailed gap analysis of banks. It is thus a useful tool for banks to evaluate how well they are performing, in term of each of their attributes relative to their peers.

Balanced Annual Scorecard for Performance in the Year 2009

The Excellence awards programme is only a small part of the big picture. It is from these processes that we develop our strategic review of the products and services. If you would like to find out more about our gap analysis, please feel free to contact us.

The focus of the programme is to recognise the banks that have been simplifying their processes and launching innovative products. These initiatives are ones that work and have an impact on the bottom line of banks as well as the industry. To maintain our focus on overall operational excellence and to determain the best retail bank in the Asia Pacific, the Central Asia and the Gulf Region, we do not include the Value of Franchise score in the regional scorecard. This is because the contributing factors to consumer perception are unique to each country and cannot be compared across the region. Players can achieve a maximum score of 47 points in the country ranking and the regional ranking.

The scorecard consists of ten dimensions with 38 indicators. Only in some areas does size matter. We are cognisant that smaller banks may be handicapped in some areas, so only 5% of all indicators favour larger banks. Most of our indicators are standardised figures, and we allow a fairly equal playing field between large and small banks. The ten dimensions are:

Perception of the bank among peers and in the marketplace

Outstanding annual performance of the retail banking unit

Sustainability over a long period of time and across economic cycles

Transparency and accountability of the business model

Clear ethical guidelines stating how business is dome with the customer

Clear sales and execution skills at the product level

Rigorous risk management capabilities

Superior business and operational processes and technology

Strong penetration and efficiency of distribution channels

Focus on developing human recources both qualitatively and quantitatively

As we continue to develop and refine our scorecard, we hope to present to the retail financial services industry a better and more accurate instrument that they can use to gauge their performance over a certain time period against that of their peers and competitors across national and regional markets. Ultimately, the Excellence programme is intended not only as an awards programme, but also as a reflective opportunity. In that sense, the programme - and the scorecard - have been developed to enable participating retail financial services institutions to grow, evolve and expand.