An Internal Efficiency Benchmarking Investigation for CEF's Sustainable Banking and Response to the COVID-19 Crisis

The Brazilian Federal Savings Bank (Caixa Econômica Federal—CEF) is the biggest government-owned bank in Latin America and the fourth globally in terms of assets. This work reports an empirical assessment of best practices conducted in one of the bank's units situated in Pernambuco. This empirical investigation is developed with a combination of Time-Series Data Envelopment Analysis for efficient (time) peers, human interactions, and the PROMETHEE methodology for outranking the best practices and strategies in accordance with the support of employees, sustainability impact and response to minimizing COVID-19 propagation during open hours. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.