The International Excellence in Retail Financial Services programme is the most rigorous, prestigious and transparent awards programme for consumer banking in Asia Pacific, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. We evaluate a total of 160 banks in 30 countries in a thorough evaluation process.

Since 2002, the programme has been built on the premise that an outstanding institution in consumer banking demonstrates a long term sustainable franchise, based on strong business processes that lead to a consistent and profitable performance. It recognises financial institutions for their vision, execution and market leading propositions that can make a real impact to the bank and its consumers.

The programme is an annual jamboree of learning, benchmarking, consulting and celebrating the best retail banks across the regions.

Backed by a substantial retail banking benchmarking programme

The Asian Banker Benchmarking Centre is an international research, training and consulting service platform that assists industry players develop their competitive capacity and succeed in the financial services industry. The Retail Banking Working Group is one of the programmes in this platform.

You can also subscribe to The Retail Banking Working Group independent of this awards programme. It contains the profile of all the retail banks we cover, data and trends on the industry, as well as case studies and interviews. It also contains templates and assertions that are rigorously tested and used to benchmark the industry worldwide. The programmme has become an invaluable tool for decision makers to ensure that they keep their retail banks ahead of the competition at all time.

Identifies best practice from around the globe

We will continue to grow the scope of the programme globally. It is our ambition to establish our presence in all parts of the world to support the development of retail financial services by creating an environment for learning and sharing. In 2011 we expanded our coverage of the Middle East and, for the first time, included selected countries from Africa.

We will not only grow the coverage of new countries in the programme, we will also monitor global best practices more closely through the introduction of an international category for the product and special awards. This will allow us to expand our body of knowledge and provide case studies and benchmarks of leading global retail banks.