A bank is a financial institution that accepts
deposits from the public and creates a
demand deposit while simultaneously making
loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through
capital markets.
Whereas banks play an important role in financial stability and the
economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a
high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as
fractional-reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure
liquidity, banks are generally subject to
minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the
Basel Accords. (Full article...)
Community development bank (CDB) or Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) is a
development bank or
credit union that focus on serving people who have been locked out of the traditional financial systems such as the
unbanked or
underbanked in deprived local communities. They emphasize the long term development of communities and provide loans such as
micro-finance or venture capital.
In the United States these became popular after 1994 when the
US Congress created community development banks and allowed them to get funding at very low rates from the US treasury. (Full article...)
Image 2
The CAMELS rating is a supervisory rating system originally developed in the U.S. to classify a bank's overall condition. It is applied to every bank and credit union in the U.S. and is also implemented outside the U.S. by various banking supervisory regulators.
An automated clearing house (ACH) is a computer-based electronic network for processing transactions, usually domestic low value payments, between participating
financial institutions. It may support both
credit transfers and
direct debits. The ACH system is designed to process batches of payments containing numerous transactions, and it charges fees low enough to encourage its use for low-value payments. (Full article...)
Fractional-reserve banking is the system of
banking in all countries worldwide, under which banks that take
deposits from the public keep only part of their
deposit liabilities in liquid assets as a reserve, typically lending the remainder to borrowers.
Bank reserves are held as
cash in the bank or as balances in the bank's account at the
central bank. Fractional-reserve banking differs from the hypothetical alternative model,
full-reserve banking, in which banks would keep all depositor funds on hand as reserves.
The country's central bank may determine a minimum amount that banks must hold in reserves, called the "
reserve requirement" or "reserve ratio". Most commercial banks hold more than this minimum amount as
excess reserves. Some countries, e.g. the core
Anglosphere countries of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and the three Scandinavian countries, do not impose reserve requirements at all. (Full article...)
Image 5
In the
English language, banq and banc are
coined words pronounced identically to the word "
bank". Both terms have been adopted by financial services companies and others to satisfy legal restrictions on the usage of the word bank. The
compoundbancorp (banc/bank + corp[oration]) is often used in the names of
bank holding companies. For example, a hypothetical chartered bank named Bank of Manhattan might form a holding company named "Manhattan Bancorp", and a sister insurance business named "Banc of Manhattan Insurance". One well-known past example was
Bank of America's investment banking entity, named
Banc of America Securities (now part of
Bank of America Merrill Lynch).
This practice originates from legal necessity: in the United States, the commerce departments of state governments generally prohibit or restrict the use of certain words in the names of corporations unless those corporations are legitimate chartered banks. For example, words prohibited by the state of Louisiana include bank, banker, banking, savings, safe deposit, trust, trustee, and credit union. (Full article...)
The Bank War was a political struggle that developed over the issue of rechartering the
Second Bank of the United States (B.U.S.) during the
presidency of
Andrew Jackson (1829–1837). The affair resulted in the shutdown of the Bank and its replacement by state banks.
The Second Bank of the United States was established as a private organization with a 20-year charter, having the exclusive right to conduct banking on a national scale. The goal behind the B.U.S. was to stabilize the American economy by establishing a uniform currency and strengthening the federal government. Supporters of the Bank regarded it as a stabilizing force in the economy due to its ability to smooth out variations in prices and trade, extend credit, supply the nation with a sound and uniform currency, provide fiscal services for the treasury department, facilitate long-distance trade, and prevent inflation by regulating the lending practices of state banks.
Jacksonian Democrats cited instances of corruption and alleged that the B.U.S. favored merchants and speculators at the expense of farmers and artisans, appropriated public money for risky private investments and interference in politics, and conferred economic privileges on a small group of stockholders and financial elites, thereby violating the principle of equal opportunity. Some found the Bank's public–private organization to be unconstitutional, and argued that the institution's charter violated
state sovereignty. To them, the Bank symbolized corruption while threatening liberty. (Full article...)
Image 7
A debit card, also known as a check card or bank card, is a
payment card that can be used in place of
cash to make purchases. The card usually consists of the bank's name, a card number, the cardholder's name, and an expiration date, on either the front or the back. Many new cards now have a chip on them, which allows people to use their card by touch (contactless), or by inserting the card and keying in a PIN as with swiping the magnetic stripe. Debit cards are similar to a
credit card, but the money for the purchase must be in the cardholder's
bank account at the time of the purchase and is immediately transferred directly from that account to the merchant's account to pay for the purchase.
Some debit cards carry a
stored value with which a payment is made (prepaid cards), but most relay a message to the cardholder's bank to withdraw funds from the cardholder's designated bank account. In some cases, the
payment card number is assigned exclusively for use on the Internet, and there is no physical card. This is referred to as a
virtual card. (Full article...)
Image 8
A universal bank is a type of
bank which participates in many kinds of banking activities and is both a
commercial bank and an
investment bank as well as providing other
financial services such as
insurance. These are also called full-service financial firms, although there can also be full-service investment banks which provide wealth and asset management, trading, underwriting, researching as well as financial advisory.
The concept is most relevant in the
United Kingdom and the
United States, where historically there was a distinction drawn between pure
investment banks and
commercial banks. In the US, this was a result of the
Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. In both countries, however, since the 1980s the regulatory barrier to the combination of investment banks and commercial banks has largely been removed, and a number of universal banks have emerged in both jurisdictions. (Full article...)
Worldwide, credit union systems vary significantly in their total assets and average institution asset size, ranging from volunteer operations with a handful of members to institutions with hundreds of thousands of members and assets worth billions of US dollars. In 2018, the number of members in credit unions worldwide was 375 million, with over 100 million members having been added since 2016. (Full article...)
Image 10
A bank account is a financial account maintained by a
bank or other financial institution in which the
financial transactions between the bank and a customer are recorded. Each financial institution sets the terms and conditions for each type of account it offers, which are classified in commonly understood types, such as
deposit accounts,
credit card accounts,
current accounts, loan accounts or many other types of account. A customer may have more than one account. Once an account is opened, funds entrusted by the customer to the financial institution on deposit are recorded in the account designated by the customer. Funds can be withdrawn from loan loaders.
The financial transactions which have occurred on a bank account within a given period of time are reported to the customer on a
bank statement, and the balance of the accounts of a customer at any point in time is their financial position with the institution.. (Full article...)
PSBC was set up with an initial capital of RMB20 billion in 2007 from the
State Post Bureau. Today it has RMB1.5 trillion in deposits and the second largest number of branches, after the
Agricultural Bank of China. (Full article...)
It is a major financial institution that started in 1875 as a
postal savings system, and that still today continues to operate primarily out of post office branches. It manages over ¥205 trillion of assets and offers services in almost 24,000 branches across Japan. At times in its history, it was the largest financial institution in the world. Since its conception, it has played a significant role in both making economic services to people in Japan and making investments towards the economic and industrial development of the country. (Full article...)
Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is a key entity of the decentralized
Raiffeisen Banking Group in
Austria, acting both as the latter's domestic central financial entity and as the holding company for all the group's operations outside of Austria. The bank is listed on the
Wiener Börse. Its major shareholders are the Raiffeisen Banking Group's eight regional banks (Raiffeisen-Landesbanken), which are bound by a
shareholders' agreement and together hold a majority of RBI's equity.
ABC has 320 million retail customers, 2.7 million corporate clients, and nearly 24,000 branches. It is China's third-largest lender by assets. ABC went public in mid-2010, fetching the world's biggest ever
initial public offering (IPO) at the time, since overtaken by the
Saudi Arabianstate-runpetroleum enterprise,
Saudi Aramco. In 2011, it ranked eighth among the Top 1000 World Banks, by 2015, it ranked third in Forbes' 13th annual Global 2000 list and in 2017 it ranked fifth. In 2023, Agricultural Bank of China was ranked #4 in Forbes' Global 2000 (World's Largest Public Companies). It is considered a
systemically important bank by the
Financial Stability Board. (Full article...)
CGD now has presence in 23 countries spanning four continents through branches, representative offices or direct equity interests in local financial institutions. CGD is the largest Portuguese financial group, with the highest domestic market shares in key areas such as customer deposits, loans and advances to customers, mortgages, insurance, mutual funds and real estate leasing (11.4%). Based on assets, it ranks 109 in terms of the world’s major banks. CGD is the 69th largest European bank. (Full article...)
The
ECB Governing Council makes
monetary policy for the
Eurozone and the
European Union, administers the
foreign exchange reserves of EU member states, engages in foreign exchange operations, and defines the intermediate monetary objectives and key interest rate of the EU. The
ECB Executive Board enforces the policies and decisions of the Governing Council, and may direct the national central banks when doing so. The ECB has the exclusive right to authorise the issuance of
euro banknotes. Member states can issue
euro coins, but the volume must be approved by the ECB beforehand. The bank also operates the
TARGET2 payments system. (Full article...)
Image 37Statesman
Jan van den Brink was instrumental in the merger of Amsterdamsche Bank and Rotterdamsche Bank in 1964, and remained on the bank's board until 1978 (from AMRO Bank)
A bank is a financial institution that accepts
deposits from the public and creates a
demand deposit while simultaneously making
loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through
capital markets.
Whereas banks play an important role in financial stability and the
economy of a country, most jurisdictions exercise a
high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as
fractional-reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure
liquidity, banks are generally subject to
minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the
Basel Accords. (Full article...)
Community development bank (CDB) or Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) is a
development bank or
credit union that focus on serving people who have been locked out of the traditional financial systems such as the
unbanked or
underbanked in deprived local communities. They emphasize the long term development of communities and provide loans such as
micro-finance or venture capital.
In the United States these became popular after 1994 when the
US Congress created community development banks and allowed them to get funding at very low rates from the US treasury. (Full article...)
Image 2
The CAMELS rating is a supervisory rating system originally developed in the U.S. to classify a bank's overall condition. It is applied to every bank and credit union in the U.S. and is also implemented outside the U.S. by various banking supervisory regulators.
An automated clearing house (ACH) is a computer-based electronic network for processing transactions, usually domestic low value payments, between participating
financial institutions. It may support both
credit transfers and
direct debits. The ACH system is designed to process batches of payments containing numerous transactions, and it charges fees low enough to encourage its use for low-value payments. (Full article...)
Fractional-reserve banking is the system of
banking in all countries worldwide, under which banks that take
deposits from the public keep only part of their
deposit liabilities in liquid assets as a reserve, typically lending the remainder to borrowers.
Bank reserves are held as
cash in the bank or as balances in the bank's account at the
central bank. Fractional-reserve banking differs from the hypothetical alternative model,
full-reserve banking, in which banks would keep all depositor funds on hand as reserves.
The country's central bank may determine a minimum amount that banks must hold in reserves, called the "
reserve requirement" or "reserve ratio". Most commercial banks hold more than this minimum amount as
excess reserves. Some countries, e.g. the core
Anglosphere countries of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and the three Scandinavian countries, do not impose reserve requirements at all. (Full article...)
Image 5
In the
English language, banq and banc are
coined words pronounced identically to the word "
bank". Both terms have been adopted by financial services companies and others to satisfy legal restrictions on the usage of the word bank. The
compoundbancorp (banc/bank + corp[oration]) is often used in the names of
bank holding companies. For example, a hypothetical chartered bank named Bank of Manhattan might form a holding company named "Manhattan Bancorp", and a sister insurance business named "Banc of Manhattan Insurance". One well-known past example was
Bank of America's investment banking entity, named
Banc of America Securities (now part of
Bank of America Merrill Lynch).
This practice originates from legal necessity: in the United States, the commerce departments of state governments generally prohibit or restrict the use of certain words in the names of corporations unless those corporations are legitimate chartered banks. For example, words prohibited by the state of Louisiana include bank, banker, banking, savings, safe deposit, trust, trustee, and credit union. (Full article...)
The Bank War was a political struggle that developed over the issue of rechartering the
Second Bank of the United States (B.U.S.) during the
presidency of
Andrew Jackson (1829–1837). The affair resulted in the shutdown of the Bank and its replacement by state banks.
The Second Bank of the United States was established as a private organization with a 20-year charter, having the exclusive right to conduct banking on a national scale. The goal behind the B.U.S. was to stabilize the American economy by establishing a uniform currency and strengthening the federal government. Supporters of the Bank regarded it as a stabilizing force in the economy due to its ability to smooth out variations in prices and trade, extend credit, supply the nation with a sound and uniform currency, provide fiscal services for the treasury department, facilitate long-distance trade, and prevent inflation by regulating the lending practices of state banks.
Jacksonian Democrats cited instances of corruption and alleged that the B.U.S. favored merchants and speculators at the expense of farmers and artisans, appropriated public money for risky private investments and interference in politics, and conferred economic privileges on a small group of stockholders and financial elites, thereby violating the principle of equal opportunity. Some found the Bank's public–private organization to be unconstitutional, and argued that the institution's charter violated
state sovereignty. To them, the Bank symbolized corruption while threatening liberty. (Full article...)
Image 7
A debit card, also known as a check card or bank card, is a
payment card that can be used in place of
cash to make purchases. The card usually consists of the bank's name, a card number, the cardholder's name, and an expiration date, on either the front or the back. Many new cards now have a chip on them, which allows people to use their card by touch (contactless), or by inserting the card and keying in a PIN as with swiping the magnetic stripe. Debit cards are similar to a
credit card, but the money for the purchase must be in the cardholder's
bank account at the time of the purchase and is immediately transferred directly from that account to the merchant's account to pay for the purchase.
Some debit cards carry a
stored value with which a payment is made (prepaid cards), but most relay a message to the cardholder's bank to withdraw funds from the cardholder's designated bank account. In some cases, the
payment card number is assigned exclusively for use on the Internet, and there is no physical card. This is referred to as a
virtual card. (Full article...)
Image 8
A universal bank is a type of
bank which participates in many kinds of banking activities and is both a
commercial bank and an
investment bank as well as providing other
financial services such as
insurance. These are also called full-service financial firms, although there can also be full-service investment banks which provide wealth and asset management, trading, underwriting, researching as well as financial advisory.
The concept is most relevant in the
United Kingdom and the
United States, where historically there was a distinction drawn between pure
investment banks and
commercial banks. In the US, this was a result of the
Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. In both countries, however, since the 1980s the regulatory barrier to the combination of investment banks and commercial banks has largely been removed, and a number of universal banks have emerged in both jurisdictions. (Full article...)
Worldwide, credit union systems vary significantly in their total assets and average institution asset size, ranging from volunteer operations with a handful of members to institutions with hundreds of thousands of members and assets worth billions of US dollars. In 2018, the number of members in credit unions worldwide was 375 million, with over 100 million members having been added since 2016. (Full article...)
Image 10
A bank account is a financial account maintained by a
bank or other financial institution in which the
financial transactions between the bank and a customer are recorded. Each financial institution sets the terms and conditions for each type of account it offers, which are classified in commonly understood types, such as
deposit accounts,
credit card accounts,
current accounts, loan accounts or many other types of account. A customer may have more than one account. Once an account is opened, funds entrusted by the customer to the financial institution on deposit are recorded in the account designated by the customer. Funds can be withdrawn from loan loaders.
The financial transactions which have occurred on a bank account within a given period of time are reported to the customer on a
bank statement, and the balance of the accounts of a customer at any point in time is their financial position with the institution.. (Full article...)
PSBC was set up with an initial capital of RMB20 billion in 2007 from the
State Post Bureau. Today it has RMB1.5 trillion in deposits and the second largest number of branches, after the
Agricultural Bank of China. (Full article...)
It is a major financial institution that started in 1875 as a
postal savings system, and that still today continues to operate primarily out of post office branches. It manages over ¥205 trillion of assets and offers services in almost 24,000 branches across Japan. At times in its history, it was the largest financial institution in the world. Since its conception, it has played a significant role in both making economic services to people in Japan and making investments towards the economic and industrial development of the country. (Full article...)
Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is a key entity of the decentralized
Raiffeisen Banking Group in
Austria, acting both as the latter's domestic central financial entity and as the holding company for all the group's operations outside of Austria. The bank is listed on the
Wiener Börse. Its major shareholders are the Raiffeisen Banking Group's eight regional banks (Raiffeisen-Landesbanken), which are bound by a
shareholders' agreement and together hold a majority of RBI's equity.
ABC has 320 million retail customers, 2.7 million corporate clients, and nearly 24,000 branches. It is China's third-largest lender by assets. ABC went public in mid-2010, fetching the world's biggest ever
initial public offering (IPO) at the time, since overtaken by the
Saudi Arabianstate-runpetroleum enterprise,
Saudi Aramco. In 2011, it ranked eighth among the Top 1000 World Banks, by 2015, it ranked third in Forbes' 13th annual Global 2000 list and in 2017 it ranked fifth. In 2023, Agricultural Bank of China was ranked #4 in Forbes' Global 2000 (World's Largest Public Companies). It is considered a
systemically important bank by the
Financial Stability Board. (Full article...)
CGD now has presence in 23 countries spanning four continents through branches, representative offices or direct equity interests in local financial institutions. CGD is the largest Portuguese financial group, with the highest domestic market shares in key areas such as customer deposits, loans and advances to customers, mortgages, insurance, mutual funds and real estate leasing (11.4%). Based on assets, it ranks 109 in terms of the world’s major banks. CGD is the 69th largest European bank. (Full article...)
The
ECB Governing Council makes
monetary policy for the
Eurozone and the
European Union, administers the
foreign exchange reserves of EU member states, engages in foreign exchange operations, and defines the intermediate monetary objectives and key interest rate of the EU. The
ECB Executive Board enforces the policies and decisions of the Governing Council, and may direct the national central banks when doing so. The ECB has the exclusive right to authorise the issuance of
euro banknotes. Member states can issue
euro coins, but the volume must be approved by the ECB beforehand. The bank also operates the
TARGET2 payments system. (Full article...)
Image 37Statesman
Jan van den Brink was instrumental in the merger of Amsterdamsche Bank and Rotterdamsche Bank in 1964, and remained on the bank's board until 1978 (from AMRO Bank)