Portal:Banks

Asset quality is an evaluation of asset to measure the credit risk associated with it. (Full article...)

Fractional-reserve banking is the system of banking 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...)

A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may fail in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking system (where banks normally only keep a small proportion of their assets as cash), numerous customers withdraw cash from deposit accounts with a financial institution at the same time because they believe that the financial institution is, or might become, insolvent. When they transfer funds to another institution, it may be characterized as a capital flight. As a bank run progresses, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy: as more people withdraw cash, the likelihood of default increases, triggering further withdrawals. This can destabilize the bank to the point where it runs out of cash and thus faces sudden bankruptcy. To combat a bank run, a bank may acquire more cash from other banks or from the central bank, or limit the amount of cash customers may withdraw, either by imposing a hard limit or by scheduling quick deliveries of cash, encouraging high-return term deposits to reduce on-demand withdrawals or suspending withdrawals altogether.

A banking panic or bank panic is a financial crisis that occurs when many banks suffer runs at the same time, as people suddenly try to convert their threatened deposits into cash or try to get out of their domestic banking system altogether. A systemic banking crisis is one where all or almost all of the banking capital in a country is wiped out. The resulting chain of bankruptcies can cause a long economic recession as domestic businesses and consumers are starved of capital as the domestic banking system shuts down. According to former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, the Great Depression was caused by the failure of the Federal Reserve System to prevent deflation, and much of the economic damage was caused directly by bank runs. The cost of cleaning up a systemic banking crisis can be huge, with fiscal costs averaging 13% of GDP and economic output losses averaging 20% of GDP for important crises from 1970 to 2007. (Full article...)

Wire transfer, bank transfer, or credit transfer, is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or entity to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account, or through a transfer of cash at a cash office.

Different wire transfer systems and operators provide a variety of options relative to the immediacy and finality of settlement and the cost, value, and volume of transactions. Central bank wire transfer systems, such as the Federal Reserve's Fedwire system in the United States, are more likely to be real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems, as they provide the quickest availability of funds. (Full article...)

An ATM card is a dedicated payment card issued by a financial institution (i.e. a bank) which enables a customer to access their financial accounts via its and others' automated teller machines (ATMs) and, in some countries, to make approved point of purchase retail transactions. Many ATM cards also doubled as cheque guarantee cards. ATM cards are not credit cards or debit cards, however most credit and debit cards can also act as ATM cards and that is the most common way that banks issue cards since the 2010s.

ATM cards are payment card size and style plastic cards with a magnetic stripe and/or a plastic smart card with a chip that contains a unique card number and some security information such as an expiration date or CVVC (CVV). ATM cards are known by a variety of names such as bank card, MAC (money access card), client card, key card or cash card, among others. Other payment cards, such as debit cards and credit cards can also function as ATM cards. Charge and proprietary cards cannot be used as ATM cards. The use of a credit card to withdraw cash at an ATM is treated differently to a point of sale transaction, usually attracting interest charges from the date of the cash withdrawal. (Full article...)

The Rhode Island banking crisis took place in the early 1990s, when approximately a third of the U.S. state of Rhode Island's population lost access to funds in their bank accounts. The events were triggered by the failure of a Providence bank, Heritage Loan & Investment, due to long-term embezzlement by its president. News of its problems led to a bank run in which customers tried to withdraw money from the bank which did not have enough money available. In normal circumstances, depositors would be protected by the bank's insurance, but the state's private insurer had a long history of problems and was unable to fulfill its commitments. When the insurer collapsed, Governor Bruce Sundlun announced the closure of 45 credit unions and banks just hours after his inauguration.

In the first banking emergency in the state since the Great Depression, 300,000 depositors lost access to their money. Though some of the institutions reopened relatively quickly after obtaining federal insurance, many did not qualify and remained closed for an extended period of time. The state government set up an agency to manage the crisis, selling $697 million in bonds to repay people while filing about 300 lawsuits against the closed institutions and other companies that played a role in the crisis. (Full article...)

A time deposit or term deposit (also known as a certificate of deposit in the United States, and as a guaranteed investment certificate in Canada) is a deposit in a financial institution with a specific maturity date or a period to maturity, commonly referred to as its "term". Time deposits differ from at call deposits, such as savings or checking accounts, which can be withdrawn at any time, without any notice or penalty. Deposits that require notice of withdrawal to be given are effectively time deposits, though they do not have a fixed maturity date.

Unlike a certificate of deposit and bonds, a time deposit is generally not negotiable; it is not transferable by the depositor, so that depositors need to deal with the financial institution when they need to prematurely cash out of the deposit. (Full article...)

An automated teller machine (ATM) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, funds transfers, balance or account information inquiries, at any time and without the need for direct interaction with bank staff.

ATMs are known by a variety of other names, including automatic teller machines (ATMs) in the United States (sometimes redundantly as "ATM machine"). In Canada, the term automated banking machine (ABM) is also used, although ATM is also very commonly used in Canada, with many Canadian organizations using ATM rather than ABM. In British English, the terms cashpoint, cash machine and hole in the wall are also used. ATMs that are not operated by a financial institution are known as "white-label" ATMs. (Full article...)

Banking secrecy, alternatively known as financial privacy, banking discretion, or bank safety, is a conditional agreement between a bank and its clients that all foregoing activities remain secure, confidential, and private. Most often associated with banking in Switzerland, banking secrecy is prevalent in Luxembourg, Monaco, Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, and Lebanon, among other off-shore banking institutions.

Otherwise known as bank–client confidentiality or banker–client privilege, the practice was started by Italian merchants during the 1600s near Northern Italy (a region that would become the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland). Geneva bankers established secrecy socially and through civil law in the French-speaking region during the 1700s. Swiss banking secrecy was first codified with the Banking Act of 1934, thus making it a crime to disclose client information to third parties without a client's consent. The law, coupled with a stable Swiss currency and international neutrality, prompted large capital flight to private Swiss accounts. During the 1940s, numbered bank accounts were introduced creating an enduring principle of bank secrecy that continues to be considered one of the main aspects of private banking globally. Advances in financial cryptography (via public-key cryptography) could make it possible to use anonymous electronic money and anonymous digital bearer certificates for financial privacy and anonymous Internet banking, given enabling institutions and secure computer systems. (Full article...)

An advising bank (also known as a notifying bank) advises a beneficiary (exporter) that a letter of credit (L/C) opened by an issuing bank for an applicant (importer) is available. An advising bank's responsibility is to authenticate the letter of credit issued by the issuer to avoid fraud. The advising bank is not necessarily responsible for the payment of the credit which it advises the beneficiary of. The advising bank is usually located in the beneficiary's country. It can be (1) a branch office of the issuing bank or a correspondent bank, or (2) a bank appointed by the beneficiary. An important point is the beneficiary has to be comfortable with the advising bank.

In case (1), the issuing bank most often sends the L/C through its branch office or correspondent bank to avoid fraud. The branch office or the correspondent bank maintains specimen signature(s) on file where it may counter-check the signature(s) on the L/C, and it has a coding system (a secret test key) to distinguish a genuine L/C from a fraudulent one (authentication). (Full article...)

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), also known as Commonwealth Bank or simply CommBank, is an Australian multinational bank with businesses across New Zealand, Asia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It provides a variety of financial services, including retail, business and institutional banking, funds management, superannuation, insurance, investment, and broking services. The Commonwealth Bank is the largest Australian listed company on the Australian Securities Exchange as of July 2024, with brands including Bankwest, Colonial First State Investments, ASB Bank (New Zealand), Commonwealth Securities (CommSec) and Commonwealth Insurance (CommInsure). Its former constituent parts were the Commonwealth Trading Bank of Australia, the Commonwealth Savings Bank of Australia, and the Commonwealth Development Bank.

Founded in 1911 by the Australian government and fully privatised in 1996, the Commonwealth Bank is one of the big four Australian banks, with the National Australia Bank (NAB), ANZ and Westpac. The bank was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange on 12 September 1991. (Full article...)

The Bank of America Corporation (Bank of America; often abbreviated BAC or BofA) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, with investment banking and auxiliary headquarters in Manhattan. The bank was founded by the merger of NationsBank and Bank of America in 1998. It is the second-largest banking institution in the United States and the second-largest bank in the world by market capitalization, both after JPMorgan Chase. Bank of America is one of the Big Four banking institutions of the United States, and one of eight systemically important financial institutions in the United States. It serves about 10 percent of all American bank deposits, in direct competition with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. Its primary financial services revolve around commercial banking, wealth management, and investment banking.
Through mergers, the oldest branch of the Bank of America franchise dates back to 1784, when Massachusetts Bank was chartered, becoming the first federally chartered joint-stock-owned bank in the United States. Another branch of its history goes back to the American-based Bank of Italy, founded by Amadeo Pietro Giannini in 1904, which provided various banking services to Italian immigrants who faced service discrimination at the time. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Giannini acquired Banca d'America e d'Italia in 1922 and eventually did business as Bank of America.

In the 1950s, the passage of landmark federal banking legislation facilitated rapid growth, quickly establishing prominent shares for the present bank's predecessors. After suffering significant losses during the 1998 Russian financial crisis, BankAmerica, as it was then known, was acquired by the Charlotte-based NationsBank for $62 billion. Following what was then the largest bank acquisition in history, the Bank of America Corporation was founded. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, it built upon its commercial banking business by establishing Merrill Lynch for wealth management and Bank of America Merrill Lynch for investment banking in 2008 and 2009, respectively, and since renamed BofA Securities. (Full article...)

The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), also known as AgBank, is a Chinese largely state-owned multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Beijing, China. It is one of the "big four" banks in China, and the second largest bank in the world by total assets, behind the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. ABC was founded on 10 July 1951, and has its headquarters in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It has branches throughout mainland China, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, New York, Frankfurt, Sydney, Seoul, and Singapore.

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 Arabian state-run petroleum 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 No. 4 in Forbes' Global 2000 (World's Largest Public Companies). It is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. (Full article...)

HSBC Holdings plc (Chinese: 滙豐; lit. 'focus of wealth') 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$3.098 trillion as of September 2024. This also puts it as the 7th largest bank in the world by total assets behind Bank of America, and the 3rd largest non-state owned bank in the world.

HSBC traces its origins 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 formally incorporated in 1866 as the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. In 1991, the current parent company, HSBC Holdings plc, was established in London and the historic Hong Kong–based bank from which the group took its name became that entity's wholly owned subsidiary. The following year (1992), HSBC took over Midland Bank, becoming one of the largest domestic banks in the United Kingdom. (Full article...)

Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈkajʃɐ ʒɨˈɾal dɨ ðɨˈpɔzituʃ]) is a Portuguese state-owned banking corporation, and the largest bank in Portugal, established in Lisbon in 1876.

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 Abbey National Building Society was formed in 1944 by the merger of the Abbey Road and the National building societies.

It was the first building society in the United Kingdom to demutualise, doing so in July 1989. The bank expanded through a number of acquisitions in the 1990s, including James Hay, Scottish Mutual, Scottish Provident and the rail leasing company Porterbrook. Abbey National launched an online bank, Cahoot, in June 2000. (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.

RBI was established in 2010 as a subsidiary of Raiffeisen Zentralbank (RZB), and absorbed the latter in March 2017 through a reverse takeover. Since then, it has been designated as a Significant Institution under European Banking Supervision, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the European Central Bank. (Full article...)

Crédit Agricole Group (French: [kʁedi aɡʁikɔl]), sometimes called La banque verte (pronounced [la bɑ̃k vɛʁt], lit. 'The green bank', due to its historical ties to farming), is a French international banking group and the world's largest cooperative financial institution. It is the second largest bank in France, after BNP Paribas, as well as the third largest in Europe and tenth largest in the world. It consists of a network of Crédit Agricole local banks, 39 Agricole regional banks and a central institute, the Crédit Agricole S.A.. It is listed through Crédit Agricole S.A., as an intermediate holding company, on Euronext Paris' first market and is part of the CAC 40 stock market index. Local banks of the group owned the regional banks, in turn the regional banks majority owned the S.A. via a holding company, and in turn the S.A. owned part of the subsidiaries of the group, such as LCL, the Italian network and the CIB unit. It is considered to be a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board.

It was the title sponsor of the Crédit Agricole professional road cycling team from 1998 to 2008. (Full article...)

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (/sæks/ SAKS) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, with regional offices in many international financial centers. Goldman Sachs is one of the largest investment banks in the world by revenue and is ranked 32nd on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. In the Forbes Global 2000 of 2025, Goldman Sachs ranked 20th. It is considered a systemically important financial institution by the Financial Stability Board.

Goldman Sachs offers services in investment banking (advisory for mergers and acquisitions and restructuring), securities underwriting, prime brokerage, asset management, and wealth management. It is a market maker for many types of financial products and provides clearing and custodian bank services. It operates private-equity funds and hedge funds. It structures complex and tailor-made financial products. It also owns Goldman Sachs Bank USA, a direct bank. It trades both on behalf of its clients (flow trading) and for its own account (proprietary trading). The company invests in and arranges financing for startups, and in many cases gets additional business as bookrunner when the companies launch initial public offerings. (Full article...)

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. (株式会社三井住友フィナンシャルグループ), initialed as SMFG until 2018 and SMBC Group since, is a major Japanese multinational financial services group and holding company. It is the parent of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), SMBC Trust Bank, and SMBC Nikko Securities. SMBC originates from the 2001 merger of Sumitomo Bank with the Sakura Bank, itself a successor to the Mitsui Bank, and the group holding entity was created in December 2002 after which SMBC became its wholly owned subsidiary.

SMBC Group operates in retail, corporate, and investment banking segment worldwide. It provides financial products and services to a wide range of clients, including individuals, small and medium-sized enterprises, large corporations, financial institutions and public sector entities. It operates in over 40 countries and maintains a presence in all International Financial Centres as the 12th biggest bank in the world by total assets. It is one of the largest global financial institutions in project finance space by total loan value. It is headquartered in the Marunouchi neighborhood of Tokyo. (Full article...)