It’s that time of year again when we at BAI Banking Strategies take out our crystal ball for a look into the upcoming year. We make no claims for prescience or accuracy, of course. About the only thing you can say about the future is that it will include plenty of things you don’t expect. But what we have tried to do in this Executive Report is sample predictions from a broad range of industry players, including large banks, small banks, solutions providers and BAI’s own research studies.

As retail bankers face the sixth year of a struggling economy, with abundant signs of more sluggishness to come, the case for innovation has shifted from nice-to-have to must-have. Banks simply cannot continue plodding along with the same burdensome cost structures in a slow-growth era. The search is on for cheaper and more efficient ways of doing business while continuing to meet (and exceed) customer expectations. In this Executive Report, we examine various approaches to solving this problem. Given that the topic will be discussed in detail in several sessions at the upcoming BAI Retail Delivery 2012, we asked our contributing writers to interview scheduled speakers at the event to present a fresh and timely look at how some of the leading institutions are seeking to promote innovation in retail banking.