Portal:Banks

Islamic banking, Islamic finance (Arabic: مصرفية إسلامية masrifiyya 'islamia), or Sharia-compliant finance is banking or financing activity that complies with Sharia (Islamic law) and its practical application through the development of Islamic economics. Some of the modes of Islamic finance include mudarabah (profit-sharing and loss-bearing), wadiah (safekeeping), musharaka (joint venture), murabahah (cost-plus), and ijarah (leasing).

Sharia prohibits riba, or usury, generally defined as interest paid on all loans of money (although some Muslims dispute whether there is a consensus that interest is equivalent to riba). Investment in businesses that provide goods or services considered contrary to Islamic principles (e.g. pork or alcohol) is also haram ("sinful and prohibited"). (Full article...)

A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodities, particularly cloth merchants. Historically, merchant banks' purpose was to facilitate and/or finance production and trade of commodities, hence the name "merchant". Few banks today restrict their activities to such a narrow scope.

In modern usage in the United States, the term additionally has taken on a more narrow meaning, and refers to a financial institution providing capital to companies in the form of share ownership instead of loans. A merchant bank also provides advice on corporate matters to the firms in which they invest. (Full article...)

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...)

The 100 point check is a personal identification system adopted by the Australian Government to combat financial transaction fraud by individuals and companies, enacted by the Financial Transactions Reports Act (1988) (FTR Act), which established the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) and which continued in existence under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006.

The 100 point system applies to individuals opening new financial accounts in Australia, including bank accounts or betting accounts. Points are allocated to the types of documentary proof of identity that the person can produce, and they must have at least 100 points of identification to be able to operate an account. The system now also applies to the establishment of a number of official identity documents, such as an Australian passport and driving licence. (Full article...)

Electronic funds transfer (EFT) is the electronic transfer of money from one bank account to another, either within a single financial institution or across multiple institutions, via computer-based systems, without the direct intervention of bank staff.

According to the United States Electronic Fund Transfer Act of 1978 it is "a funds transfer initiated through an electronic terminal, telephone, computer (including on-line banking) or magnetic tape for the purpose of ordering, instructing, or authorizing a financial institution to debit or credit a consumer's account". (Full article...)

The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, (Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 106–102 (text) (PDF), 113 Stat. 1338, enacted November 12, 1999) is an act of the 106th United States Congress (1999–2001). It repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, removing barriers in the market among banking companies, securities companies, and insurance companies that prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. With the passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies were allowed to consolidate. Furthermore, it failed to give to the SEC or any other financial regulatory agency the authority to regulate large investment bank holding companies. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

A year before the law was passed, Citicorp, a commercial bank holding company, merged with the insurance company Travelers Group in 1998 to form the conglomerate Citigroup, a corporation combining banking, securities and insurance services under a house of brands that included Citibank, Smith Barney, Primerica, and Travelers. Because this merger was a violation of the Glass–Steagall Act and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, the Federal Reserve gave Citigroup a temporary waiver in September 1998. Less than a year later, GLBA was passed to legalize these types of mergers on a permanent basis. The law also repealed Glass–Steagall's conflict of interest prohibitions "against simultaneous service by any officer, director, or employee of a securities firm as an officer, director, or employee of any member bank." (Full article...)

Electronic bill payment is a feature of online, mobile and telephone banking, similar in its effect to a giro, allowing a customer of a financial institution to transfer money from their transaction or credit card account to a creditor or vendor such as a public utility, department store or an individual to be credited against a specific account. These payments are typically executed electronically as a direct deposit through a national payment system, operated by the banks or in conjunction with the government. Payment is typically initiated by the payer but can also be set up as a direct debit.

In addition to the bill payment facility, most banks will also offer various features with their electronic bill payment systems. These include the ability to schedule payments in advance to be made on a specified date (convenient for installments such as mortgage and support payments), to save the biller information for reuse at a future time and various options for searching the recent payment history. In many cases the payment data can also be downloaded and posted directly into the customer's accounting or personal finance software. (Full article...)

A savings and loan association (S&L), or thrift institution, is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans. The terms "S&L" and "thrift" are mainly used in the United States; similar institutions in the United Kingdom, Ireland and some Commonwealth countries include building societies and trustee savings banks. They are often mutually held (often called mutual savings banks), meaning that the depositors and borrowers are members with voting rights, and have the ability to direct the financial and managerial goals of the organization like the members of a credit union or the policyholders of a mutual insurance company. While it is possible for an S&L to be a joint-stock company, and even publicly traded, in such instances it is no longer truly a mutual association, and depositors and borrowers no longer have membership rights and managerial control. By law, thrifts can have no more than 20 percent of their lending in commercial loans—their focus on mortgage and consumer loans makes them particularly vulnerable to housing downturns such as the deep one the U.S. experienced in 2007. (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...)

The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline observed in national economies globally, i.e. a recession, that occurred in the late 2000s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression. One result was a serious disruption of normal international relations.

The causes of the Great Recession include a combination of vulnerabilities that developed in the financial system, along with a series of triggering events that began with the bursting of the United States housing bubble in 2005–2012. When housing prices fell and homeowners began to abandon their mortgages, the value of mortgage-backed securities held by investment banks declined in 2007–2008, causing several to collapse or be bailed out in September 2008. This 2007–2008 phase was called the subprime mortgage crisis. The combination of banks unable to provide funds to businesses, and homeowners paying down debt rather than borrowing and spending, resulted in the Great Recession that began in the U.S. officially in December 2007 and lasted until June 2009, thus extending over 19 months. As with most other recessions, it appears that no known formal theoretical or empirical model was able to accurately predict the advance of this recession, except for minor signals in the sudden rise of forecast probabilities, which were still well under 50%. (Full article...)

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC; Chinese: 中国工商银行) is the largest bank in China and in the world, by total assets. ICBC was created on 1 January 1984 from what were then the commercial banking operations of the People's Bank of China. ICBC is majority-owned by the Chinese government and has remained so after its landmark initial public offering in 2006. As of end-2021, ICBC shareholders included Central Huijin Investment (34.7 percent), the Chinese Ministry of Finance (31.1 percent), the National Council for Social Security Fund (3.5 percent), adding up to 69.3 percent under the ultimate control of the Ministry of Finance.

ICBC became the world's largest bank by total assets in 2012 (based on year-end balance sheet) and has kept this rank ever since. It was ranked first on the Forbes Global 2000 list of the world's top public companies in 2015. On 31 December 2022, It was the third-largest bank in the world by market capitalization at $211 billion. It is one of the most profitable companies in the world, ranking fourth according to Forbes in 2022 . It has been designated a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) since the start of the FSB's listing. (Full article...)

The Bank of France (French: Banque de France, the name used by the bank to refer to itself in all English communications) is the French member of the Eurosystem. It was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 as a private-sector corporation with unique public status. It was granted note-issuance monopoly in Paris in 1803 and in the entire country in 1848, issuing the French franc. Charles de Gaulle's government nationalized the bank in 1945 after several governance changes in the meantime. It remained France's sole monetary authority until end-1998, when France adopted the euro as its currency.

The Bank of France long held high prestige as an anchor of financial stability, especially before the monetary turmoil that followed World War I. In 1907, Italian economist and statesman Luigi Luzzatti referred to the Bank of France as "the centre of the world's monetary power." (Full article...)

The ING Group (Dutch: ING Groep) is a Dutch multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Amsterdam. Its primary businesses are retail banking, direct banking, commercial banking, investment banking, wholesale banking, private banking, asset management, and insurance services. With total assets of US$967.8 billion, it is one of the biggest banks in the world, and consistently ranks among the largest banks globally.

ING is the Dutch member of the Inter-Alpha Group of Banks, a co-operative consortium of 11 prominent European banks. Since the creation in 2012, ING Bank is a member in the list of global systemically important banks. It has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the European Central Bank. (Full article...)

Japan Post Bank Co., Ltd. (株式会社ゆうちょ銀行, Kabushiki gaisha Yūcho Ginkō) is a Japanese bank headquartered in Tokyo. It is a corporation held by Japan Post Holdings, in which the government of Japan has a majority stake.

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...)

Postal Savings Bank of China Co., Ltd. also known as PSBC is a commercial retail bank founded in 2007 and headquartered in Beijing. It provides basic financial services, especially to small and medium enterprises, rural and low income customers. As of 31 December 2017, PSBC has 39,798 branches covering all regions of China. IPSBC was ranked #27 in Forbes Global 2000 in 2023.

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...)

HSBC Holdings plc (Chinese: 滙豐; acronym from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business links to East Asia and a multinational footprint. It is the largest Europe-based bank by total assets, ahead of BNP Paribas, with US$2.919 trillion as of December 2023. In 2021, HSBC had $10.8 trillion in assets under custody (AUC) and $4.9 trillion in assets under administration (AUA).

HSBC traces its origin to a hong trading house in British Hong Kong. The bank was established in 1865 in Hong Kong and opened branches in Shanghai in the same year. It was first formally incorporated in 1866. In 1991, the present parent legal entity, HSBC Holdings plc, was established in London and the historic Hong-Kong-based bank from whose initials the group took its name became that entity's fully-owned subsidiary. The next year (1992), HSBC took over Midland Bank and thus became one of the largest domestic banks in the United Kingdom. (Full article...)

Société Générale S.A. (French: [sɔsjete ʒeneʁal]), colloquially known in English speaking countries as SocGen (French: [sɔk ʒɛn]), is a French-based multinational financial services company founded in 1864, registered in downtown Paris and headquartered nearby in La Défense.

Société Générale is France's third largest bank by total assets after BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole. It is also the sixth largest bank in Europe and the world's eighteenth. It is considered to be a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. It has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision in late 2014, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the European Central Bank. (Full article...)

Citigroup Inc. or Citi (stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services corporation incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York City. The company was formed by the merger of Citicorp, the bank holding company for Citibank, and Travelers in 1998; Travelers was spun off from the company in 2002.

Citigroup is the third-largest banking institution in the United States by assets; alongside JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, it is one of the Big Four banking institutions of the United States. It is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board and is commonly cited as being too big to fail. It is one of the eight global investment banks in the Bulge Bracket. Citigroup is ranked 36th on the Fortune 500, and was ranked #24 in Forbes Global 2000 in 2023. (Full article...)

Standard Chartered PLC is a British multinational bank with operations in consumer, corporate and institutional banking, and treasury services. Despite being headquartered in the United Kingdom, it does not conduct retail banking in the UK, and around 90% of its profits come from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Standard Chartered has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has secondary listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India, and OTC Markets Group Pink. Its largest shareholder is the Government of Singapore-owned Temasek Holdings. The Financial Stability Board considers it a systemically important bank. (Full article...)

Credit Suisse Group AG (French pronunciation: [kʁe.di sɥis], lit. 'Swiss Credit') was a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, it maintained offices in all major financial centers around the world and provided services in investment banking, private banking, asset management, and shared services. It was known for strict bank–client confidentiality and banking secrecy. The Financial Stability Board considered it to be a global systemically important bank. Credit Suisse was also a primary dealer and Forex counterparty of the Federal Reserve in the United States.

Credit Suisse was founded in 1856 to fund the development of Switzerland's rail system. It issued loans that helped create Switzerland's electrical grid and the European rail system. In the 1900s, it began shifting to retail banking in response to the elevation of the middle class and competition from fellow Swiss banks UBS and Julius Bär. Credit Suisse partnered with First Boston in 1978 before buying a controlling share of the bank in 1988. From 1990 to 2000, the company purchased institutions such as Winterthur Group, Swiss Volksbank, Swiss American Securities Inc. (SASI), and Bank Leu. (Full article...)