In the light of fierce international competition is essential for banks to face the problem of productivity. But what are the real levels of productivity and how can it be measured? The most common index of productivity and efficiency is the cost income ratio (CIR), which nevertheless proves...

The recent years have been extremely difficult for banks. Competition has increased and, in addition, last year the global financial market crisis hit the industry, from which many banks did not recover yet. As a consequence, financial institutions are looking for ways to cut costs and to...

Most previous research on efficiency in banking takes a regulatory perspective. In contrast,this paper investigates the empirical relation between efficiency and profitability in five largeeconomies of the European Union during the period 1998-2005 and discusses the results fromthe perspective...

The emergence of e-commerce leads to a fundamental change for the financialindustry. The transition into a digital economy produces numerous newopportunities as well as great risks. B2B e-commerce in particular is considered apromising field for the future. As B2B is very closely related to...

Banks permanently claim to supply customer-orientated services. However,banking services are still focused on purely delivering financial products.Customers who approach the bank will usually receive financial products but norespective solution for their problem. In that way, the customers’...