Portal:Banks

Giro or GIRO may refer to: (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...)

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. This is because they post the gross (complete) entry against electronic accounts of the wire transfer system operator. Other systems, such as the Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS), provide net settlement on a periodic basis. More immediate settlement systems tend to process higher monetary value time-critical transactions, have higher transaction costs, and have a smaller volume of payments. A faster settlement process allows less time for currency fluctuations while money is in transit. (Full article...)

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a United States government corporation supplying deposit insurance to depositors in American commercial banks and savings banks. The FDIC was created by the Banking Act of 1933, enacted during the Great Depression to restore trust in the American banking system. More than one-third of banks failed in the years before the FDIC's creation, and bank runs were common. The insurance limit was initially US$2,500 per ownership category, and this has been increased several times over the years. Since the enactment of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, the FDIC insures deposits in member banks up to $250,000 per ownership category. FDIC insurance is backed by the full faith and credit of the government of the United States, and according to the FDIC, "since its start in 1933 no depositor has ever lost a penny of FDIC-insured funds".

Deposits placed with non-bank fintech financial technology companies are not protected by the FDIC against failure of the fintech company. If the company places the money in an FDIC-insured bank account consumers are protected only under some conditions. (Full article...)

A depository bank (U.S. usage) or depositary bank (predominantly EU usage) is a specialist financial entity which, depending on jurisdiction, facilitates investment in securities markets. (Full article...)

A mutual savings bank is a financial institution chartered by a central or regional government, without capital stock, owned by its members who subscribe to a common fund. From this fund, claims, loans, etc., are paid. Profits after deductions are shared among the members. The institution is intended to provide a safe place for individual members to save and to invest those savings in mortgages, loans, stocks, bonds and other securities and to share in any profits or losses that result. (Full article...)

An ethical bank, also known as a social, alternative, civic, or sustainable bank, is a bank concerned with the social and environmental impacts of its investments and loans. The ethical banking movement includes: ethical investment, impact investment, socially responsible investment, corporate social responsibility, and is also related to such movements as the fair trade movement, ethical consumerism, and social enterprise.

Other areas of ethical consumerism, such as fair trade labelling, have comprehensive codes and regulations which must be adhered to in order to be certified. Ethical banking has not developed to this point; because of this it is difficult to create a concrete definition that distinguishes ethical banks from conventional banks. Ethical banks are regulated by the same authorities as traditional banks and have to abide by the same rules. While there are differences between ethical banks, they do share a desire to uphold principles in the projects they finance, the most frequent including: transparency and social and/or environmental values. Ethical banks sometimes work with narrower profit margins than traditional ones, and therefore they may have few offices and operate mostly by phone, Internet, or mail. Ethical banking is considered one of several forms of alternative banking. (Full article...)

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.

The ratings are assigned based on a ratio analysis of the financial statements, combined with on-site examinations made by a designated supervisory regulator. In the U.S. these supervisory regulators include the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the National Credit Union Administration, the Farm Credit Administration, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. (Full article...)

The Panic of 1907, also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis, was a financial crisis that took place in the United States over a three-week period starting in mid-October, when the New York Stock Exchange suddenly fell almost 50% from its peak the previous year. The panic occurred during a time of economic recession, and there were numerous runs affecting banks and trust companies. The 1907 panic eventually spread throughout the nation when many state and local banks and businesses entered bankruptcy. The primary causes of the run included a retraction of market liquidity by a number of New York City banks and a loss of confidence among depositors, exacerbated by unregulated side bets at bucket shops.

The panic was triggered by the failed attempt in October 1907 to corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company. When the bid failed, banks that had lent money to the cornering scheme suffered runs that later spread to affiliated banks and trusts, leading a week later to the downfall of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, New York City's third-largest trust. The collapse of the Knickerbocker spread fear throughout the city's trusts as regional banks withdrew reserves from New York City banks. The panic then extended across the nation as vast numbers of people withdrew deposits from their regional banks, causing the 8th-largest decline in U.S. stock market history. (Full article...)

Banking regulation and supervision refers to a form of financial regulation which subjects banks to certain requirements, restrictions and guidelines, enforced by a financial regulatory authority generally referred to as banking supervisor, with semantic variations across jurisdictions. By and large, banking regulation and supervision aims at ensuring that banks are safe and sound and at fostering market transparency between banks and the individuals and corporations with whom they conduct business.

Its main component is prudential regulation and supervision whose aim is to ensure that banks are viable and resilient ("safe and sound") so as to reduce the likelihood and impact of bank failures that may trigger systemic risk. Prudential regulation and supervision requires banks to control risks and hold adequate capital as defined by capital requirements, liquidity requirements, the imposition of concentration risk (or large exposures) limits, and related reporting and public disclosure requirements and supervisory controls and processes. Other components include supervision aimed at enforcing consumer protection, sometimes also referred to as conduct-of-business (or simply "conduct") regulation and supervision of banks, and anti-money laundering supervision that aims to ensure banks implement the applicable AML/CFT framework. Deposit insurance and resolution authority are also parts of the banking regulatory and supervisory framework. Bank (prudential) supervision is a form of "microprudential" policy to the extent it applies to individual credit institutions, as opposed to macroprudential regulation whose intent is to consider the financial system as a whole. (Full article...)

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central component of the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's most important central banks with a balance sheet total of around 7 trillion.

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 T2 (RTGS) payments system. (Full article...)

The Bank of China (BOC; Chinese: 中国银行; pinyin: Zhōngguó Yínháng; Portuguese: Banco da China) is a state-owned Chinese multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Beijing, China. It is one of the "big four" banks in China. As of 31 December 2019, it was the second-largest lender in China overall and ninth-largest bank in the world by market capitalization value, and it is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. As of the end of 2020, it was the fourth-largest bank in the world in terms of total assets, ranked after the other three Chinese banks.

The Bank of China was formed in 1912 by renaming the Qing dynasty's Da-Qing Bank (est. 1905) under the newly established Republican government. Until 1942, it issued banknotes on behalf of the government as one of the "Big Four" banks of the period, together with the Bank of Communications (est. 1908), Central Bank of China (est. 1924), and Farmers Bank of China (est. 1933). Following the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, the bank continued activity in Taiwan where it renamed itself International Commercial Bank of China upon privatization in 1971, while its mainland operations were absorbed into the People's Bank of China (PBC). In 1979, the Bank of China was re-established by spin-off from the PBC in the early phase of Chinese economic reform. (Full article...)

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC; French: Banque Royale du Canada) is a Canadian multinational financial services company and the largest bank in Canada by market capitalization. The bank serves over 20 million clients and has more than 100,000 employees worldwide. Founded in 1864 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, it maintains its corporate headquarters in Toronto and its head office in Montreal. RBC's institution number is 003. In November 2017, RBC was added to the Financial Stability Board's list of global systemically important banks.

In Canada, the bank's personal and commercial banking operations are branded as RBC Royal Bank in English and RBC Banque Royale in French and serves approximately 11 million clients through its network of 1,284 branches. RBC Bank is a US banking subsidiary which formerly operated 439 branches across six states in the Southeastern United States, but now only offers cross-border banking services to Canadian travellers and expats. RBC's other Los Angeles-based US subsidiary City National Bank operates 79 branches across 11 US states. RBC also has 127 branches across seventeen countries in the Caribbean, which serve more than 16 million clients. RBC Capital Markets is RBC's worldwide investment and corporate banking subsidiary, while the investment brokerage firm is known as RBC Dominion Securities. Investment banking services are also provided through RBC Bank and the focus is on middle market clients. (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 Sep 1991. (Full article...)

Banco Santander S.A. trading as Santander Group (UK: /ˌsæntənˈdɛər, -tæn-/ SAN-tən-DAIR, -⁠tan-, US: /ˌsɑːntɑːnˈdɛər/ SAHN-tahn-DAIR, Spanish: [ˈbaŋko santanˈdeɾ]), is a Spanish multinational financial services company based in Santander, with operative offices in Madrid. Additionally, Santander maintains a presence in most global financial centres as the 14th-largest banking institution in the world. Although known for its European banking operations, it has extended operations across North and South America, and more recently in continental Asia. It is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board.

Many subsidiaries, such as Abbey National, have been rebranded under the Santander name. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. In June 2023, Santander was ranked as 49th in the Forbes Global 2000 list of the world's biggest public companies.. (Full article...)

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC; Chinese: 中国工商银行) is a Chinese partially state-owned multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Beijing, China. It is the largest of the "big four" banks in China, and the largest bank 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...)

UniCredit S.p.A. (formerly UniCredito Italiano S.p.A.) is an Italian multinational banking group headquartered in Milan. It is a systemically important bank (according to the list provided by the Financial Stability Board in 2022) and the world's 34th largest by assets. It was formed through the merger of Credito Italiano and Unicredito in 1998 but has a corporate identity stretching back to its first foundation in 1870 as Banca di Genova. UniCredit is listed on the Borsa Italiana and Frankfurt Stock Exchange and is a constituent stock of the Euro Stoxx 50 index of leading shares.

With corporate & investment banking, commercial banking and wealth management operations, Unicredit is a pan-European bank with a strong presence in Western, Central and Eastern Europe. Through its European banking network, it provides access to market-leading products and services in 13 core markets: Italy, Germany as HypoVereinsbank, Austria as Bank Austria, Russia and nine other Central and Southeast European countries. (Full article...)

Shinhan Bank Co., Ltd. (Korean: 주식회사 신한은행; RR: Jusikhoesa Sinhan Eunhaeng) is a bank headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. It was founded under that name in 1982, but through its merger with Chohung Bank in 2006, traces its origins to the Hanseong Bank (est. 1897), one of the first banks to be established in Korea. It is part of the Shinhan Financial Group, along with Jeju Bank. As of June 30, 2016, Shinhan Bank had total assets of ₩298.945 trillion (equivalent to ₩304.658 trillion or US$269.507 billion in 2017)^[1] , total deposits of ₩221.047 trillion (equivalent to ₩225.271 trillion or US$199.28 billion in 2017)^[1] and loans of ₩212.228 trillion (equivalent to ₩216.283 trillion or US$191.329 billion in 2017)^[1]. Shinhan Bank is the main subsidiary of Shinhan Financial Group (SFG). (Full article...)

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. (MUFG; 株式会社三菱UFJフィナンシャル・グループ, Kabushiki gaisha Mitsubishi Yūefujei Finansharu Gurūpu) is a Japanese bank holding and financial services company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. MUFG was created in 2005 by merger between Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group (株式会社三菱東京フィナンシャル・グループ, Kabushiki kaisha mitsubishi tōkyō finansharu gurūpu) and UFJ Holdings (株式会社UFJホールディングス; kabushikigaisha yūefujei hōrudingusu). These two groups in turn brought together multiple predecessor banks including Mitsubishi Bank (est. 1880), Yokohama Specie Bank (est. 1880 as a policy bank, reorganized after World War II as Bank of Tokyo), Sanwa Bank (est. 1933 by merger of prior institutions), and Tokai Bank (est. 1941 by merger).

MUFG holds assets of around US$2.7 trillion as of 2024 and is the parent company of fully-owned MUFG Bank (branded Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ or BTMU until July 2018), Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and MUFG Americas Holdings Corporation; majority shareholder of Bank Danamon in Indonesia, Bank of Ayudhya in Thailand, and Mitsubishi UFJ NICOS in Japan; and a large minority shareholder in the Master Trust Bank of Japan, Morgan Stanley in the United States, Security Bank in the Philippines, and Vietinbank in Vietnam. It retains strong links with the Mitsubishi Group and is often described as one of that group’s "Three Great Houses", together with Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. (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 Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many international financial centers. Goldman Sachs is the second-largest investment bank in the world by revenue and is ranked 55th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. In the Forbes Global 2000 of 2024, Goldman Sachs ranked 23rd. 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 as well as wealth management and investment management via Goldman Sachs Personal Financial 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...)