Frequently Asked Questions

Our flagship programme is the three levels of Certified International Retail Banker. We also offer Executive Programmes aimed at bringing senior executives up to speed on the rapidly changing world of retail banking. We also offer focused short courses in the critical areas of retail banking including Operations, Sales and Management, Fintech, Retail Credit Risk, and Digital Payments.

Most of our candidates take one of our scheduled programmes with weekly interactive tutorials, and for the Affiliate and Associate programmes, the training takes ten weeks in total. We do also offer a self-paced programme so candidates can move through the training at their own convenience. We find that self-paced candidates typically complete the Retail Banker programmes in between eight and sixteen weeks, studying a few hours each week.

With eight modules, it takes eight weeks to finish this programme through one of the scheduled training programmes. All scheduled programmes typically run three times a year, starting in February, May, and September. We accommodate requests from individual banks that want to put an entire leadership team through the training programmes.

Our scheduled programmes typically run three times a year. For our self-paced programmes, we enrol candidates on a continuous basis.

Retail Banking Institute is part of the Lafferty Group. The Group has its roots in the early 1980s, when Michael Lafferty launched a newsletter to inform and educate banks about global developments in what was then the emerging field of retail banking. At that time, retail bankers were hardly identifiable within banks' management structures, while the credit card and the ATM were barely 20 years old. Corporate bankers became bank CEOs.

Little was published about retail banking but Lafferty Group filled this knowledge gap with its newsletters, management reports, research services, conferences, and workshops. In the 1990s Lafferty Group launched its Councils where senior bankers came together to share best practices in confidential sessions hosted around the world.

By then retail banking was emerging as the main source of profits for many banks, and more and more heads of retail were becoming bank CEOs. Investors had come to value retail profits far more highly than those from any other field of banking.

With the arrival of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08, illegal and improper practices of all kinds were soon exposed, and the bad behaviour sometimes extended to retail banking. Inevitably, the absence of structured education and qualifications for retail bankers came to the fore, especially when the findings of government enquiries into the causes of the crisis were published in the years following the crisis.

After much research and consultation with clients Lafferty Group decided that it should seek official recognition for its work in retail banking education and training. This led it to apply for Institute status to the registrar of companies in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform of the United Kingdom. Success depended on the regulators being satisfied that the company had been engaged in retail banking research, training and education at the highest level for several decades and was in effect already functioning as an Institute.

The regulators agreed. Permission to operate in the name of the Retail Banking Institute was granted in September 2020.

Our tutors are senior retail bankers who have until recently held executive board and similar roles in major banks across Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Americas, and you can find more detail about them on the Faculty page under the About Us tab. Our course material is commissioned and edited by our Academic Director, Dr Ronan Lynch.

As the course is self-paced, the candidates are required to read through and understand the course materials on the online portal. Our experience is that candidates typically spend between four to eight hours per week taking the short programmes.

The course is run virtually, supplemented by a one-hour live interactive webinar for each module.}
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Where requested, we can run a virtual graduation at the conclusion of the course.

Each programme has a multiple-choice exam at the end of the programme, with the results confidential to the candidates. Candidates who successfully pass the exams are awarded a qualification in their chosen field by the Retail Banking Institute.

The main benefits for a chief executive or senior leader enrolling in this programme is that the study of this material:

 brings you as a leader right up to date with modern retail banking which has gone through a digital revolution
 briefs you on the opportunities that come with digital banking, from new revenue streams to much-reduced costs
 briefs you on the new risks involved in modern retail banking
 briefs you on how FinTech and banking are now merging
 enhances your credibility with regulators
 increases your personal confidence and credibility with colleagues/reports

You can apply directly to most programmes by selecting the programme and clicking the Register Now button.

If you wish to enrol a number of candidates, please contact Caroline Hastings for group pricing.

We accept all major credit cards. We can also provide you with details for bank payments.

Retail Banking Institute is recognised as an institute in the United Kingdom, which allows us to offer our own certifications.

We provide guidance on the most appropriate programme on the programmes page, but if you're uncertain which programme is best suited to you, give us a call or send an email, and we'll be glad to talk you through the options so you get the knowledge you need, with the best value for yourself and your team.