Английский язык для студентов заочной формы обучения - страница 9

Transfer of funds can be handled through written instruments: contracts, cheques, or direct transfers performed electronically. Nowadays banks provide the customers with additional ways of gaining access to their funds and using them. These are credit cards and account debit cards, electronic cash tills, computer on-line banking, and other services.

Automated clearing houses perform similar services for business customers by handling regular payments, such as wages, for a company banking with the bank.

Longer-term schemes for providing regular income on savings are often offered through trust funds or other investment schemes.

Lending and loans

Loans to bank customers are drawn on the funds deposited with the bank and yield interest which provides the profits for the banking industry and the interest on savings accounts. These loans may take the form of mortgages or other policies. Banks may guarantee credit for customers who wish to obtain loans from other institutions. They also provide foreign exchange facilities for individual customers, as well as handling large international money transfers.

Text B. Banks

Banks are organizations that carry out the business of banking, taking deposits and then using those deposits to make loans. In essence, a bank aims to make a profit by paying depositors a lower rate of interest than the rate the bank charges borrowers. In accounting terms, deposits are considered liabilities (because they have to be repaid), and loans are considered assets.

Banks in most countries are supervised by a central bank, such as the Bank of England in the United Kingdom, the Bundesbank in Germany, the Federal Reserve System in the United States and Central Bank in Russia.

There are many different types of bank, and the banking structure varies from one country to another. Banks can fall into the following categories:

Retail banks are often referred to as commercial banks. In addition to conventional banking services, such as the provision of chequing accounts, they deal in foreign exchange, issue credit cards, provide investment and tax advice, and sell financial products such as insurance. In the United Kingdom the biggest retail banks (by assets) are Barclays Bank, National Westminster Bank/Midland Bank, Abbey National Bank.

Merchant or investment banks act as intermediaries between investors and private or public concerns seeking medium to long-term funds, often acting as underwriters for an issue of shares. Increasingly they have played a fundamental role in advising on mergers and acquisitions, and on management buy-outs. In the United Kingdom, some of the longest established and best-known merchant banks are still privately owned.

Building societies were set up in the United Kingdom to take deposits in order to provide long-term loans (mortgages) to homebuyers. They are owned by their members (those who have deposited money with or borrowed money from them).

Savings Banks were set up with the aim of attracting small savers. They resemble retail banks in the services they provide.