The Retail Banking Academy (RBA) is a UK-based educational body, founded with the objective of playing a leading role in the development and professionalisation of consumer-oriented retail banking around the world. It is the only educational and professional academy exclusively dedicated to retail banking anywhere in the world.
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The organisation offers the Certified Retail Banker (CRB) designation, as well as ARB I and ARB II designations at the two Associate Retail Banker levels. The Retail Banking Academy has its headquarters in London, UK.
History
The organisation was founded in London, UK in 2011 as the International Academy of Retail Banking with the objective of educating retail bankers worldwide to a high professional standard.
It believes that a separated, independent retail banking sector should be led by professionally qualified retail bankers, bound by an ethical code similar to those already in place for accountants and lawyers. This ethical code is intended to oblige retail bankers to act in the customer’s best interests. Bankers who persistently fail to comply would be barred from membership of the profession. To that end, the RBA believes that the foundation stone for a retail banking profession must be the complete separation of retail banking from both investment banking and large-scale corporate banking.
In 2012 the UK Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards accepted evidence from a number of participants operating in the banking sector. The Retail Banking Academy was one of the participants, and its submission was included in selected submissions in its final published report, Changing Banking for Good, which outlines the radical reform required to improve standards across the banking industry.
In October 2014, the organisation changed its name from the International Academy of Retail Banking to the Retail Banking Academy.
Governance
The Retail Banking Academy is governed by a board of directors, an academic standards board, an awarding organisation and its governing body. The board of directors is chaired by Michael Lafferty (chairman of Lafferty Group, co-chairman of OMFIF and a former Financial Times journalist). The academic director is Professor Abdul Rahman, a former full professor of economics and finance and Telfer teaching Fellow at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa.