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The role of the HR business partner has been heralded as the salvation of HR and the route to making a strategic contribution. Sharon Brockway, director for Roffey Park’s new HR Business Partnering program, explores why business partnering too often fails to live up to expectations and examines how HR at Lloyds TSB was successfully repositioned from playing a transactionary role to a more strategic one.

The paper examines a financial service innovation process, which is referred to as financial product innovation: improvements to existing services. This study conducts a critical analysis of the operational process of opening a Lloyds TSB Student Account at a local branch.

The process of opening a student bank account is documented in a flowchart/flow network, which highlights operational steps and the visibility line between front‐end and backroom staff. This process mapping technique/flowchart allows for the diagnosis and identification of both potential and actual bottlenecks in the existing process, which prevented a quality service encounter for the customer. After outlining these problematic areas/non‐value added activities, the adopted qualitative triangulated methodological approach yields a redesigned flowchart illustrating these changes. Furthermore, this paper proposes a re‐engineered process (i.e. e‐process or virtual process), which removes these bottlenecks systematically.

The results show the increased efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction levels that are the key to innovation process performance. The study concludes with evidence of non‐financial performance results of this type of financial service innovation.

The study does not quantify the performance of e‐process operations, and it does not examine customer concerns related to complexity, trust security and safety issues. However, it provides useful managerial recommendations for improving the process of opening a student account. Numerous key learning points and invaluable insights gathered during this project are practical contributions both to managers involved in innovation process and researchers interested in this domain.

This paper provides a re‐engineered process which is simpler, more economical and faster than the original process. It presents principles to diagnose appropriate service operation processes for re‐engineering using action mapping programmes and review their innovation performances. Managers will learn new frameworks, diagnostic tools and analysis techniques to better understand and improve their firm's service operations. This study is designed to give service innovation managers and e‐marketers instantaneous and continuous improvement in the quality of their e‐service designs.

One of its contributions lies in increasing the ability of managers to improve their knowledge and skills for responding to the e‐service innovation process. It adds to the growing literature on the innovation process for financial services. While the study answers a number of salient questions, it also produces a stimulus for further investigation of service innovation through the provision of future research directions in this area.

The growth and nature of bank marketing during the past decade has been a reflection of the intensity of competition for personal savings within the financial sector and the development of financial services. Early in the 1970s, various competitive pressures finally led banks to adopt a marketing concept, both in theory and practice. The authors examine the use of advertising as a marketing tool and then explore the significance of media selection in the approaches adopted by the UK banks to market segmentation.

The purpose of this paper is to consider in the light of the post August 2007 banking crises, how “fair” access to retail banking services for British households and small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can be assured.

The current responsibility for assuring the bank customers are “treated fairly” belongs to the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The paper argues for the establishment of a banking commission to regulate retail banks as utilities, leaving the FSA to concentrate on prudential (“risk based”) supervision of bank and non‐bank financial institutions.

If access to payments services is infrastructural and access to finance is regarded as essential in a modern society, then retail banks should be regulated as utilities.

The banking crisis led to calls for banks to maintain lending to SMEs and households (especially mortgages). This implies that access to finance, like access to water and electricity, should be assured and that customers should be protected against the “monopoly” powers of large suppliers. Hence, retail banks are utilities and should be regulated as such.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of intellectual capital performance in the UK banks over the period 1999‐2005.

Multiple regression analysis is used to test the relationship between the intellectual capital performance as a dependent variable and certain independent variables.

Results indicate that the standard variables, bank profitability and bank risk, are important. The results also show that investment in information technology (IT) systems, bank efficiency, barriers to entry and efficiency of investment in intellectual capital variables, which have not been considered in previous studies, have a significant impact on intellectual capital performance.

More evidence is needed on the determinants of intellectual capital performance before any generalisation of the results can be made. In addition, the empirical tests were conducted only on the Major British Banks Group over the period 1999‐2005 and hence the results of the study cannot be assumed to extend beyond this group of banks or to different study periods.

The study might help the banking regulators in addressing the factors affecting intellectual capital performance to take actions towards developing their performance and in turn maximise their value creation.

This paper adds to the literature on the determinants of intellectual capital performance in banks. In particular, it tests the theories that investment in IT systems, bank efficiency, barriers to entry and efficiency of investment in intellectual capital have impact on intellectual capital performance.

The objective of this article is to examine the criminal conduct of convicted bankers and institutions for the purpose of identifying any measurable factor that can determine the degree of risk an organization faces from the threat of organized crime.

Primary research was conducted of the money laundering related acts of bankers and banks charged with criminal offenses. In addition, interviews were conducted of professionals with first‐hand knowledge, directly involved in the events related to these prosecutions.

Although maintenance of a competent anti‐money laundering compliance program is required by law, the real measure of a financial institution's risk from organized crime is directly proportional to the degree with which the business line of an institution genuinely embraces, participates in, and benefits from the anti‐money laundering protocols established by the institution's compliance function.

This paper is original research conducted and presented from the viewpoint of a specialist.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to analyse the use of emotional appeals in business-to-business (B2B) bank advertisements and to understand business owners’ perceptions of such appeals.

In Study 1,834 print advertisements collected from British newspapers were content analysed. In Study 2, semi-structured interviews with 17 business owners operating a business current account with a British bank were carried out.

Emotional appeals are embedded in B2B financial services advertisements, and business owners acknowledge the presence of emotional appeals; however, the perceived congruency between emotional appeal and financial services could not be established as participants reported a largely utilitarian, need- and benefit-driven decision-making process.

Accurately measuring emotions aroused through advertisements is considered a limitation. In addition, the sample of participants considered for this research project was small and medium-sized business owners.

Emotional appeals should be used in conjunction with detailed rational information about financial products, as emotional appeals only arouse interest. Relationship is considered crucial in capitalising on the emotionally appealing advertisements. Customers must feel appreciated and loyalty should be rewarded.

The paper responds to numerous calls for more research into the role of emotional influences on the relationships in a B2B context and on the behaviour of business customers.

Savings banks are an important European banking sector. From their traditional retail banking roots of catering for the poorer social groups and providing a limited range of specialist services, many savings banks today have evolved into full‐service universal banks that are virtually indistinguishable from their commercial bank competitors. Examines the strategic environment, challenges and different adaptive organizational models pursued by European savings banks. From recent survey and case study evidence, finds that savings banks’ strategies across Europe differ significantly in many respects. A common strategic imperative, however, is that savings banks are having to respond to intensifying competition and the related need to improve efficiency at all levels. A practical empirical indicator of these trends and changes is the increasing strategic importance of marketing.

Management training at Lloyds TSB Independent Financial Advisers has helped to boost enthusiasm among line managers, improve communication between departments and create a new momentum within the organization. The bank sought to provide managers and aspiring managers in its Independent Financial Advisers business with the skills, confidence and enthusiasm to operate with flair in a highly‐regulated marketplace. It opted for the Open University Business School (OUBS) professional certificate in management, combined with activities to enrich the curriculum and apply it to Lloyds TSB.

Since the merger of Lloyds and TSB banks in 1995/96, the number of operational staff working within the company has increased two‐fold, paving the way for Lloyds TSB to develop a new company training, programmes, aimed specifically at operational and support staff.