Portal:Banks

An offshore bank is a bank that is operated and regulated under international banking license (often called offshore license), which usually prohibits the bank from establishing any business activities in the jurisdiction of establishment. Due to less regulation and transparency, accounts with offshore banks were often used to hide undeclared income. Since the 1980s, jurisdictions that provide financial services to nonresidents on a big scale can be referred to as offshore financial centres. OFCs often also levy little or no corporation tax and/or personal income but impose high direct taxes such as duty, making the cost of living high.

With worldwide increasing measures on CTF (combatting the financing of terrorism) and AML (anti-money laundering) compliance, the offshore banking sector in most jurisdictions was subject to changing regulations. Since 2002 the Financial Action Task Force issues the so-called FATF blacklist of "Non-Cooperative Countries or Territories" (NCCTs), which it perceived to be non-cooperative in the global fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. (Full article...)

Wall Street is a street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs eight city blocks between Broadway in the west and South Street and the East River in the east with a length of just under 2,000 feet. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and its reports of NYSE-listed companies, financial markets of the United States, American financial services industry, New York-based financial interests, or the Financial District. Anchored by Wall Street, New York has been described as the world's principal fintech and financial center.

The street was originally known in Dutch as Het Cingel ("the Belt") when it was part of New Amsterdam during the 17th century. An actual city wall existed on the street from 1653 to 1699. During the 18th century, the location served as a slave market and securities trading site, and from 1703 onward, as the location of New York's city hall, which became Federal Hall. In the early 19th century, both residences and businesses occupied the area, but increasingly the latter predominated, and New York's financial industry became centered on Wall Street. During the 20th century, several early skyscrapers were built on Wall Street, including 40 Wall Street, once the world's tallest building. The street is near multiple subway stations and ferry terminals. (Full article...)

A bank holding company is a company that controls one or more banks, but does not necessarily engage in banking itself. The compound bancorp (banc/bank + corp[oration]) or bancorporation is often used to refer to such companies as well, particularly in the United States. (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...)

Cooperative banking is retail and commercial banking organized on a cooperative basis. Cooperative banking institutions take deposits and lend money in most parts of the world.

Cooperative banking, as discussed here, includes retail banking carried out by credit unions, mutual savings banks, building societies and cooperatives, as well as commercial banking services provided by mutual organizations (such as cooperative federations) to cooperative businesses. (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 automated clearing house (ACH) is a computer-based electronic network for processing transactions, usually domestic low-value payments, between participating financial institutions. It may support both credit transfers and direct debits. The ACH system is designed to process batches of payments containing numerous transactions, and it charges fees low enough to encourage its use for low-value payments. (Full article...)

A cheque (or check in American English) is a document that orders a bank, building society, or credit union, to pay a specific amount of money from a person's account to the person in whose name the cheque has been issued. The person writing the cheque, known as the drawer, has a transaction banking account (often called a current, cheque, chequing, checking, or share draft account) where the money is held. The drawer writes various details including the monetary amount, date, and a payee on the cheque, and signs it, ordering their bank, known as the drawee, to pay the amount of money stated to the payee.

Although forms of cheques have been in use since ancient times and at least since the 9th century, they became a highly popular non-cash method for making payments during the 20th century and usage of cheques peaked. By the second half of the 20th century, as cheque processing became automated, billions of cheques were issued annually; these volumes peaked in or around the early 1990s. Since then, cheque usage has fallen, being replaced by electronic payment systems, such as debit cards, credit cards, and mobile payments. In an increasing number of countries, cheques have either become a marginal payment system or have been completely phased out. (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. FDIC deposit insurance covers up to $250,000 per depositor, per FDIC-insured bank, for each account 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...)

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), legally S.W.I.F.T. SC, is a cooperative established in 1973 in Belgium (French: Société Coopérative) and owned by the banks and other member firms that use its service. SWIFT provides the main messaging network through which international payments are initiated. It also sells software and services to financial institutions, mostly for use on its proprietary "SWIFTNet", and assigns ISO 9362 Business Identifier Codes (BICs), popularly known as "SWIFT codes".

As of 2018, around half of all high-value cross-border payments worldwide used the SWIFT network, and in 2015, SWIFT linked more than 11,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries and territories, who were exchanging an average of over 32 million messages per day (compared to an average of 2.4 million daily messages in 1995). (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...)

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (/sæks/ SAKS) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. It was founded in 1869 and is headquartered in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, with offices in many financial centers worldwide. Goldman Sachs is one of the largest investment banks by revenue. It is ranked 32nd on the Fortune 500 and 19th on the Forbes Global 2000. It is considered a systemically important financial institution (SIFI).

The company receives revenues from market making for many types of financial products (31% of 2025 revenues); net interest income (23% of 2025 revenues); investment management and wealth management (20% of 2025 revenues); investment banking (advisory for mergers and acquisitions and restructuring and securities underwriting, including initial public offerings) (16% of 2025 revenues); commissions and fees for clearing financial transactions (7% of 2025 revenues); and proprietary trading (3% of 2025 revenues). (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...)

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...)

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. According to S&P Global's April 2026 report, HSBC is Europe's second-largest bank by assets, with $3.212 trillion in assets. This also puts it as the eighth-largest bank in the world by total assets and the third-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...)

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation (Russian: Центральный банк Российской Федерации), commonly known as the Bank of Russia (Russian: Банк России) or CB (Russian: ЦБ), also widely referred to as the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), is the central bank of the Russian Federation. The bank was established on 13 July 1990. It traces its beginnings to the State Bank of the Russian Empire established in 1860.

The bank is headquartered on Neglinnaya Street in Moscow. Its functions are described in the Constitution of Russia (Article 75), as well as in federal law. (Full article...)

Toronto-Dominion Bank (French: Banque Toronto-Dominion), doing business as TD Bank Group (Groupe Banque TD), and commonly known as just TD, is a Canadian multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. The bank was created on February 1, 1955, through the merger of the Bank of Toronto and the Dominion Bank, which were founded in 1855 and 1869, respectively. It is one of two Big Five banks of Canada founded in Toronto, the other being the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

In 2021, according to Standard & Poor's, TD Bank Group was the largest bank in Canada by total assets and also by market capitalization, a top 15 bank in North America, and the 26th largest bank in the world. In 2019, it was designated a global systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. In 2023, the company was ranked 43rd in the Forbes Global 2000. (Full article...)

Postal Savings Bank of China Co., Ltd. also known as PSBC is a Chinese retail bank and financial services corporation headquartered in Beijing, China. PSBC 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. PSBC 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...)

Danske Bank A/S (pronounced [ˈtænˀskə ˈpɑŋˀk], lit. 'Danish Bank') is a Danish multinational banking and financial services corporation. Headquartered in Copenhagen, it is the largest bank in Denmark and a major retail bank in the northern European region with over 5 million retail customers.

As of 2025, Danske Bank's largest shareholder with 21% of the share capital was A.P. Moller Holding [da], the investment holding company of the Maersk family. (Full article...)

Barclays PLC (/ˈbɑːrkliz/, occasionally /-leɪz/) is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as five divisions: the UK Consumer Bank, UK Corporate Bank, Private Bank and Wealth Management (PBWM), Investment Bank, and the US Consumer Bank.

Barclays traces its origins to the goldsmith banking business established in the City of London in 1690 by Quakers John Freame and Thomas Gould. James Barclay became a partner in the business in 1736. In 1896, twelve banks in London and the English provinces, including Goslings Bank, Backhouse's Bank and Gurney, Peckover and Company, united as a joint-stock bank under the name Barclays and Co. Over the following decades, Barclays expanded to become a nationwide bank. In 1967, Barclays deployed the world's first cash dispenser. Barclays has made numerous corporate acquisitions, including of London, Provincial and South Western Bank in 1918, British Linen Bank in 1919, Mercantile Credit in 1975, the Woolwich in 2000 and the North American operations of Lehman Brothers in 2008. (Full article...)