Banking

Banking makes a major contribution to mature economies but banking crises can do them great damage. Bank regulation is a compromise between the avoidance of banking crises and the preservation of banking efficiency. Following the crash of 2008, proposals for regulatory reform are under consideration, and there are prospects of major changes to the structure of the world's banking industry.


 * (Banking's role in currency management is dealt with in a separate article on currency controversies)


 * (For definitions of the terms shown in italics  in this article,  see the glossary on the Related Articles subpage, and for a child's guide to the mathematics of fractional reserve banking see the Tutorials subpage).

Banking essentials
The task of understanding banking can be hampered by a preoccupation with its long and varied history, or with the complex instruments and additional functions that banks have acquired in the course of the last thirty years. Putting those preoccupations aside, the matter is straightforward. Banks are financial intermediaries - acting as middlemen between lenders and borrowers. They have that in common with moneylenders - but they are more than that. Most banks accept payments from depositors and lend money to borrowers - most of which are businesses. Loans are shown on their balance sheets as "assets" and deposits are shown as "liabilities". In order to lend more money than they possess (that is to say more than the total of their deposits, the repayments and interest payments from borrowers and the money received from shareholders)  they can borrow money from their government's or central bank's "discount window"", or from the money market, in return for short-term notes or longer term bonds (that are then sold to investors). They make profits by charging higher interest rates to  their borrowers than they pay to their lenders (the difference is known as "spread").

On the normally sound assumption that depositors will not all want to have their money back at the same time, banks can safely use those arrangements to make loans amounting to many times the total of their deposits - often as much as twenty times as much (a multiple known as "leverage"). However, to guard against the possibility of a surge in depositors' withdrawals, banks have to maintain reserves in the form of cash or assets that can be quickly sold for cash (known as maintaining adequate "liquidity"). A liquidity  crisis brought upon a bank because it does not have enough money to meet the demands of its depositors can usually be dealt with by borrowing from other banks  (using the "interbank market") or, in an emergency, by borrowing at a "penal" rate of interest from its "central bank" (calling upon the central bank's function of acting as "lender of last resort") - although that is seen as a sign of incompetence and has been known to alarm a bank's depositors and provoke a "run" in which large numbers of depositors demand to have their money back.

There are other complications, but those are the essentials.

The banks that perform the above functions are called "commercial" or "retail" banks. "Wholesale" banks deal with other banks or financial companies, rather than the general public. "Investment banks", also known as "merchant banks", concentrate on raising money for companies by finding buyers for their equity and their corporate bonds. "Universal banks" combine all of those activities, and often others such as insurance.

Medieval banking
A variety of enterprises whose activities can be broadly described as banking were in existence before and during the middle ages. Some, that have been categorised as "deposit banks", accepted deposits and made loans; some, termed "exchange banks" were restricted to providing the means of making transactions between traders using different currencies; and others combined both functions. Deposit banking is believed by historians to have  evolved from  money changing. Coins were displacing barter as a means of trading but since they were of variable quality, it is thought to have been convenient to use the services of a money-changer. A trader could open an account with a money-changer into which he could deposit and withdraw coinage. Payments to other traders with accounts with the same trader could then be made by having the money-changer debit his account and credit theirs. The money-changer had to keep some coins in reserve for withdrawals and  payments to other money-changers but since, with random inflows and outflows, a net outflow amounting to a major proportion of the money deposited  was unlikely, the otherwise idle cash was made available for  loans. Those loans usually took the form of overdrafts to depositors because they were considered less risky than loans to strangers. The main causes of bank failures were fraud, and defaults on loans made to kings to pay their armies.

Renaissance banking
Few European banks achieved a reputation for probity and stability before the 17th century,  mainly because of the absence of established property rights or of the effective discouragement of fraud. There were a few local attempts to create stable and reliable banks. For example, the municipal authorities in Barcelona set up a public bank in the late fourteenth century, which accepted deposits but was not authorised to make loans to the public, but elsewhere banking  fraud and financial failure were commonplace. The best-known among the few exception was the Medici bank, which flourished in Florence in the first half of the fifteenth century, surviving long enough to develop some significant innovations. In particular, it brought about the general commercial use   of  "bills, of exchange" (which are the banking  counterpart of  promissary notes or IOUs), which enabled traders to defer payment for a purchase. Its practices are thought to have served as the model for modern European banking.

Banking in the 17th and 18th centuries
In the early years of the 17th century, the municipal authorities of Amsterdam, being aware that commercial activity there was being hampered by the uncertainties created by the circulaton of coins of various currencies and differing quality, decided to take action. As a corrective they founded the "Wisselbank" in 1609, , and required it to maintain a high level of stability by maintaining its reserves of coins and precious metals at a level close to 100 per centof its deposits. It operated mainly as a service to merchants who were trading in different currencies and it did not make loans to the public. Its main contribution to banking innovation was a system of transfers by cheques and direct debits that was similar to the system in use in the 21st century. The Wisselbank had some of the characterestics of a modern central bank, and it  inaugurated a five-hundred-year period of participation in, and regulation of banks by public authorities. However, the claim to have been the world's first central bank is made by the Swedish Riksbank which was inaugurated 1668 as the successor to John Palmstruch's  "Stockholm  Banco". It was nominally a private bank, but the King of Sweden appointed its management, and regulated its operations. Unlike the Wisselbank, it issued loans and maintained reserves at only a fraction of its deposits. Its main contribution to banking innovation was the issue the first modern banknotes, which were interest-free bills of exchange, denominated in specific amounts and - in principal - corresponding  in total value  to money deposited in the bank. It was later to be formally recognised as a public bank with a statutory monopoly of the issue of banknotes. The Bank of England was created as a private bank in 1694, mainly in order to raise money for the government of the day (by converting some of its debt to shares in the bank and in 1709 it was granted a partial monopoly in the issue of banknotes. . . The bank maintained sufficient reserves of gold to redeem its notes on demand (except during the Napoleonic War, when that facility had to be suspended). An attempt was made to set up a French central bank in 1710, but after a successful start, it collapsed in 1720, causing a major economic crisis. . United States banking commenced  in  the 1780s with the chartering of the Bank of North America, and the creation of the First Bank of the United States with a limited role as a central bank..

Banking regulation in the 19th century
In the United States, there followed a protracted series of politically controversial and mainly unsuccessful attempts to regulate its rapidly expanding banking sector. At the state level, banks had to be registered with state legislatures, who set reserve requirements that were, at best, loosely enforced. Few of them survived for more than five years. At the national level, the First Bank of the United States was closed, to be succeeded by the Second Bank of the United States until it too was closed in 1836 without achieving a significant improvement in banking stability. In 1864, the United States Congress passed the National Banking Act with the intention of creating a network of federally-chartered "national banks" with improved regulatory standards, but without setting up another central bank.

In England, the need for regulation became evident in 1866 when the collapse of the Gurney-Overend bank caused a panic in which large numbers of people tried to withdraw deposits from their banks; leading to the collapse of over 200 companies. On that occasion the Bank of England had refused to help, but the influential commentator Walter Bagehot urged that in a future panic it should "advance freely and vigorously to the public out of its reserves" in order to avoid another "run on the banks", and in 1890 the Bank rescued the failing Barings bank by guaranteeing loans to it by other banks. The Bank Charter Act of 1844  had established it  as the only institution in England with note-issuing powers, and the Bank of England was gradually assuming in full, the role of a modern central bank.

Regulation, deregulation and securitisation in the 20th century
In the United States there had been similar initial inaction in face of the panic of 1893 but following the further panic of 1907 the Congress created the Federal Reserve System and granted it powers to assist banks that faced demands that they would otherwise be unable to meet. The subsequent practice of central banks in the United States and elsewhere has been to assume the role of lender of last resort and provide short-term loans to solvent banks to tide them over  temporary liquidity difficulties, and  also to provide or arrange longer-term loans to avert failures that would be large enough to threaten the stability of the banking system. The next important innovation was prompted by the sequence of bank runs and failures that occurred in the period from 1929 t0 1933. The Banking Act of 1933, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, with  authority to regulate and supervise state  banks outside the Federal Reserve System and provide them with deposit insurance.

The Act also prohibited combinations of commercial and investment banking. and other restrictions were also imposed upon banking activity (see the Addendum subpage). Restrictions upon banking activities - intended to reduce the danger of a recurrence of the financial instability experienced in the early 1930s - were imposed by most other industrialised countries. Until the 1980s, investment banks were not normally permitted to undertake non-financial activities, nor other financial activities such as branch banking, insurance or mortgage lending. In the 1980s, however, there was extensive deregulation of the banks with the intention of increasing competition and improving efficiency. Reserve requirements were relaxed and restrictions upon the range of their financial activities were generally relaxed or removed .

The most significant of the banking innovations that were introduced on the 1980s were the practice of securitisation, meaning the conversion of their loans into graded packages of bonds; and  the development of the strategy  known as "originate and distribute", under which  such bonds were sold  to pension funds, insurance companies and other banks.

The economic benefits of banking
There is a strong presumption that - by providing a conduit between savers and investors - banking makes a significant contribution to the functioning of an economy; and that a financial system that includes a well-functioning banking sector may even be a necessary precondition for economic growth. Studies of the Dutch Republic, England, the U.S., France, Germany and Japan suggest that the establishment of a financial system has always preceded the onset of economic growth, and a correlation between financial developments and economic growth over the period 1850-1997 has been established by a cross-section study of 17 countries. It has also been shown that countries with more sophisticated financial systems tend to  engage in more trade, and appear to be better integrated  with other  economies. .

Basel I and Basel II
Responsibility for assessing risk was placed upon the banks and the credit agencies.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Bank runs first appeared as part of cycles of credit expansion and its subsequent contraction. In the 16th century onwards, English goldsmiths issuing promissory notes suffered severe failures due to bad harvests plummeting parts of the country into famine and unrest. Other examples are the Dutch Tulip manias (1634-1637), the British South Sea Bubble (1717-1719), the French Mississippi Company (1717-1720).

The nineteenth century
the "Post Napoleonic Depression" (1815-1830)

Discount rate changes
By reducing its discount rate (the interest rate that the it charges for loans to banks), a central bank can increase the banks' motive to increase their reserves  by borrowing, and thus raise their ability to issue loans and create money. Correspondingly, an increase in the central bank's discount rate is a means of reducing the money supply.

Open market operations
The money supply can also be raised by an open market operation in which the central bank offers to buy government securities from them, paying for them by  a nominal increase in the reserves  that the banks deposit with it (sometimes referred to as "printing money"). The resulting increase in the banks' reserves enable them to increase borrowing and create money.

Reserve and capital requirements
Alternatively, the money supply can be increased more directly by reducing their required reserve ratios, or their required capital adequacy ratios.