Introduction
Retail banks have traditionally provided payment services to small businesses and individuals involved in a large volumes of low cost transactions. It is nowadays difficult to classify retail banks because the majority of banks offer wholesale and retail activities. Technological developments, also enable these banks to provide a number of retail monetary services to its clients. Retail banks also offer insurance products, pension schemes, and stock services.
Northern Rock is a British bank that was harmfully affected by the United State subprime market fall down in 2007. However, the British government in February 2008 took control of it after it collapsed. On the other hand, the Building Societies Association in the United Kingdom claims that the subprime mortgages and loans to persons whom failure to pay their own loans, were not the primary reason of Northern Rock's meltdown. (Craido and Van Rixtel, 2008).
Northern Rock required emergency support by the Bank of England for the reason that it funded loans using extensive money markets, which included grouped subprime mortgages, instead of using money put in by retail savers (Barbara, 2006, p. 14-15).
For a bank to attract a lot of customers, it has to come up with strategies on how to do it. Good strategies results to the growth of any business enterprise. Short-term profits culture among banks and combinations of investment banking and retail banking operations are linked with the collapse of the northern rock in this study we will analyze the features that make large retail banks unique in the economy and how these features contributed to the fall of northern rock (Mullineux, 2003, p. 8-12).
Features that make large retail banks unique in the economy
...
... middle of paper ...
...e lines to take out their money, banking officials tried to convince to its clients to stay calm, saying that the bank and financial system were stable. Before the closure of the bank, it had made losses for six months; this is what led to its nationalization. All the same, northern rock should not have concentrated on offering mortgage services only. It should have offered other services like giving personal loans, insurance and should also have adopted the features of some of the large retail banks like LLOYYDS who were outsourcing some of its processes in order to cut down its costs. Also, it should have embarked on evaluating customers needs so that it can understand their concerns in order to come up with ideas on how to protect their interests; in the process it could have prevented customers from running away to other large retail firms.
The Savings and Loans Crisis of the 1980’s and early 90’s created the greatest banking collapse since the Great Depression in 1929. Over half the S & L’s failed, along with the FSLIC fund that was created to insure their deposits.
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 is considered by many economists the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This crisis resulted in the threat of total collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. The crisis led to a series of events including: the 2008–2012 global recessions and the European sovereign-debt crisis. The reasons of this financial crisis are argued by economists. The performance of the Federal Reserve becomes a focal point in this argument.
The year 2008 was a very scary one for anyone involved in the US stock market. Due to subprime lending, and cheap mortgages, the housing market became grossly overinflated. Naturally, as with a balloon that’s filled too much, it “popped”. The resulting collapse of the housing bubble had severe implications for the rest of the US economy, housing, and related industries such as lumber, construction, and realty all came crashing down, and the people employed in those fields soon found themselves out of work. As with the stock market crash of 1929, fear of the economic instability caused people to pull their money out of any investments they had. This can be a problem for a healthy bank, being unable to supply the money people are requesting if it’s tied up in loans. However, this would prove to be an even bigger problem if the money never existed in the first place, and would take down one of the largest scams in American history.
The Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis of 2008 has been the largest financial crisis to take place since the end of the Great Depression. It was the actions of individuals and companies that caused this crisis. For although it could have been adverted, too much money was being made by too many people in place of authority to think deeply on the situation. As such, by the time actions were taken to attempt to rectify the situation, it was already too late. Trillions of dollar of tax payers’ money was spent trying to repair the situation that was caused by the breakdown of ethics and accountability in the private sector. And despite the government’s actions to attempt to contain the crisis, hundreds of thousands lives were negatively affected before, during, and after this crisis.
The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the establishment of banks in the Caribbean largely as a convenience for the local governments. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, most Caribbean banks operated as an oligopoly with limited government influence – this directly translated into higher profits. However, over time, the banking environment could best be described as complex and dynamic. Competition increased, resulting into greater need for improved customer service, product innovation and cost reduction strategies. In order to achieve this, the banking sector was undergoing major structural reforms characterized by mergers and acquisitions. On July 23, 2001 Barclays and CIBC announced that they were in advanced discussions which were intended to lead to the combination of their retail, corporate and offshore banking operations in the Caribbean.
The "subprime crises" was one of the most significant financial events since the Great Depression and definitely left a mark upon the country as we remain upon a steady path towards recovering fully. The financial crisis of 2008, became a defining moment within the infrastructure of the US financial system and its need for restructuring. One of the main moments that alerted the global economy of our declining state was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sunday, September 14, 2008 and after this the economy began spreading as companies and individuals were struggling to find a way around this crisis. (Murphy, 2008) The US banking sector was first hit with a crisis amongst liquidity and declining world stock markets as well. The subprime mortgage crisis was characterized by a decrease within the housing market due to excessive individuals and corporate debt along with risky lending and borrowing practices. Over time, the market apparently began displaying more weaknesses as the global financial system was being affected. With this being said, this brings into question about who is actually to assume blame for this financial fiasco. It is extremely hard to just assign blame to one individual party as there were many different factors at work here. This paper will analyze how the stakeholders created a financial disaster and did nothing to prevent it as the credit rating agencies created an amount of turmoil due to their unethical decisions and costly mistakes.
Savings and Loans Associations in the US, commonly known as thrift organisations, were originally intended to aid citizens in local communities purchase their own properties writes (Laughlin., 1991, p. 301). In order to achieve this, thrifts would accept savings from individuals and resultantly, make affordable low rate mortgage loans. Leading up to the 1980s, mortgage rates received, were viewed upon as the safest form of liability due to little credit risk involved. However, the Savings and Loans (S&L) crisis of the 1980s was concluded as one of the worst financial disasters of the twentieth century. The Federal Agency (Curry & Shibut, 1986, p. 29) recorded an estimated 1,100 S&L firms to be insolvent between 1980 and 1982, with the cost to the taxpayers nearing $200 billion estimate. The aim of this text is to provide a background into S&Ls, to establish the causes to the crisis including the concept of deposit insurance and its role in the disaster.
Initially the bank’s core banking system was product oriented, but the need of the hour was to develop a customer oriented system, because the challenge is to build customer loyalty, cross sell, and enhance repeat business.
The recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) initially began with the collapse of credits and financial markets, which caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US in 2007. The sub-prime mortgages were given to high-risk lenders (with bad credit history) who were in danger of defaulting, which eventually caused a global credit crunch, where the banks were unwilling to lend to each other. In October 2008, the collapse of the major financial institutions and the crash of stock markets marked the peak of this global economic slowdown (Euromonitor International, 2008).
A Report on NatWest Bank and an Analysis of the Banking Industry 1. Introduction This report focuses on NatWest and the industry in which it operates. The purpose of the report is to give a concise but accurate view of how NatWest operates as an organisation and the links between its environment, in this case the banking industry. Company History =
Communication modern technological tools that have been enhanced by Information Technology are having an impact on changing the very structure and communication of banking. That is, clients are enabled to make their banking transactions whenever and wherever they want. Bank clients, by just logging on their online account, can transfer any amount of money from their account to any other account, check their last processed banking transactions and apply for loans and other banking services. According to Keyes ( 2000, p.591) 'electronic checks provide consumers with the benefits of convenience and safety while allowing billers to maintain their existing depository relationships with their banks'. Further, e-mails has enabled bank employees to notify their customers of any new enhanced bankin...
The failure of adequate board accountability has indicated strong adverse effects on corporate performance including, the bankruptcy of various public companies, thereby casting serious doubt on the credibility and efficacy of board accountability. For example, Lehman Brothers scandal, the largest bankruptcy in U.S history, Northern Rock was a large failure of a financial institution in the United Kingdom (Hull 2015:16). In Ireland, the Anglo-Irish Bank created a huge bubble that plunged the state into economic recession. In September 28, 2008, the Irish Government signed into law, the “bank guarantee” which provided with immediate effect a guarantee arrangement to safeguard all deposits in retail, commercial, institutional and interbank transactions, covered bonds, senior debt and dated subordinated debt (Lenihan 2008). Banks in Ireland clearly needed yet more capital from the State (Irish Times 19 November 2011) and this underscores the need for the government’s bailout
One of the reasons why banks adopted this new system, was the ‘boom’ in online shopping and the need for an online payment platform. For the bank themselves, online banking reduces customer service staffing levels, as well as improving speed and flexibility of business transactions. (Shih and Fang, 2004)
It is a known fact that the banking industry plays a huge role in today’s society, the industry has grown rapidly of many decades and still growing. The banking sector is that sector of the society that is actually responsible for the handling of financial assets for other sector of the economy, they do this by investing the financial assets in order to create more wealth in the society while regulating all the activities involved in the process. (What is the banking Sector 2015)
A variety of groups are concerned in bank profitability for various reasons. The bank shareholders would want to know if the value of their investments is high or low. The investors also use current and past performance to predict future price of the banks’ shares traded on the stock exchanged. The management of the bank as trustee of the shareholders is evaluated and compensated on the basis of how well their decisions and planning have contributed to growth in assets and profits of their banks. Employees of bank also are concerned with profits, since their salaries and promotions are frequently tied to the profitability performance of their banks. Depositors use bank performance and profitability as indicators of security for their deposits in the banks. Finally, business community and general public are concerned about their banks’ performance to the extent that their economic prosperity is linked to the success or failure of their banks.