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Abstract
Overall bank efficiency - a key measure of a bank's leadership performance - has not improved during the past four years. Its overall efficiency ratio stood at 56.52 percent at the end of 2006, virtually unchanged from the 56.5-percent rate at the end of 2003. Banks' overall efficiency ratio has not improved because institutionalizing the discipline of improving it presents, quite frankly, a daunting and continuing challenge to management. To accomplish it requires small initiatives as well as big ones, and it also requires a corporate culture from the very top of the organization that demands this constant process of efficiency improvement. Seven characteristics found to be most common among highly efficient and effective banks: 1. Focused senior management. 2. Clear, concise message. 3. Embrace change. 4. Understand market and competition. 5. Customer-centric focus. 6. Metrics that work. 7. Open to new technology.