The beginning of the book reveals how today's best performing banks have achieved their success, and looks at what challenges lie ahead both for them and for those preparing to ascend to the top. One intriguing insight of the research is the composition of the highest performing banks: There are not only large-scale, multi-specialist players; but also regional broad based retail banks. It is the unique composition of strategic and organizational factors that lead to success formulae, which enable the players for the top league.

It’s easy to agree that strong corporate leadership and a performance culture are keys to success, but actually building them is tremendously difficult. We offer an approach tried and proven by top managers. Moreover, we examine best practices and offer insights in three key market segments: affluent, mass market, and small-business banking.

Isolated sales initiatives have limited chances of success. We describe the top banks' integrated approach – from creating a marketing, sales and service-oriented organization to getting the most out of pricing and marketing spend – and show the impact that it can have on bank performance.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, distribution has been only a minor differentiator in retail banking performance over the last ten years. Nevertheless, there's still significant potential for value creation for banks that master multi-channel management.

IT is not some magic bullet that can cure a bank's back end woes. But thoughtfully applied, IT can make a dramatic and positive difference. We discuss the disciplines of cost leadership and show how to rationalize IT-costs and revolutionize operations through outsourcing and offshoring.

As all banks enter a new regulatory era with significant credit requirements, we show how banks can deal with issues such as internal credit rating, loan pricing and proactive workout.

The book does not attempt to cover every possible aspect of retail banking; instead it focuses on those competencies that are decisive for achieving success. Of greatest importance are realizing the hidden value of corporate leadership by building a strong performance culture, and building a world class sales function – which at most of the high performing banks goes hand-in-hand with a service culture that outperforms competitors. Many banks will argue that they are already working on these areas, and indeed they are. However, the question is whether they are pushing their efforts to a world-class level, where it matters most for the market position to which they aspire.