Outline the key characteristics of the retail banks.

Name 10 different types of services by a typical retail bank for its personal customers.

State 10 different types of services provided by a typical retail bank for its corporate customers.

The group of retail banks comprises a rather diverse set of institutions which vary substantially in terms of size.

Some of the institutions, notably the London clearing banks, have been es­tablished as banks for a very long time: others for a relatively short lime, one example being the Abbey National which has been a bank only since July 1989, a consequence of its conversion from a mutual building society to plc status. In 1997, Halifax plc was formed, as the building society became a retail bank.

The scope of the activities of the institutions varies substantially. The largest clearing banks, for example, all have very extensive wholesale activities, while those of the Yorkshire Bank, for instance, are much more limited. Abbey National plc, unsurprisingly in view of the recent conversion from mutual building society status, has activities that are more akin to building societies than to the other banks in the group. (The Banking Department of the Bank of England has a very different set of activities from the other retail banks in the group.

Despite these differences, all the institutions offer banking services at a retail level, which involves large numbers of low-value transactions. All the institutions have large branch networks, although in the case of Girobank plc, its branch network consists of post offices rat her than being under its direct control.

Services

Their most important function, which the large branch networks support, is to offer current accounts, the major purpose of which - from the point of view of the account-holder – is that they allow the settlement of debts by means of the transfer of funds from one account to another. To allow these transfers of funds, the retail banks have to provide, in conjunction with the current accounts, domestic payments services. To achieve this, they offer cheque payment services (supported by cheque guarantee cards to improve accept­ability), bank giro credit facilities, direct debits, standing orders, electronic funds transfer (via the Bankers' Automated Clearing Service, now shortened to BACS) and by the Clearing House Automated Payments System (CHAPS)), together with debit and credit card facilities.

Although current accounts, and the associated payment mechanisms, repre­sent the most important function of the retail banks, note the wide range of other banking services that they also provide. Directed particularly at personal customers, these services include;

- A range of savings accounts;

- Personal loans, both secured and unsecured;

- Mortgage loans;

- Overdraft facilities;

- Automated teller machines (to allow cash dispensing and other banking services out of normal banking hours);

- Home blinking by telephone (to allow transactions to be initiated away from brandies and outside normal banking hours);

- Travellers' cheques and foreign currencies;

- Advice on taxation and financial matters;

- Executor and trustee facilities;

- ‘Private banking’ for individuals with incomes of about £35.000 or over and net assets of about £75,000-£100,000 and over.

- Directed particularly at corporate customers, the services include:

- Overdraft facilities and loans, ranging from short-term working capital facilities to long-term secured loans;

- Cash management schemes;

- Electronic banking, using electronic data interchange (EDI) techniques:

- Leasing and hire purchase, often through subsidiaries;

- Export and import financing facilities:

- Payroll services;

- International financial transfers;

- Financial management advice.

Naturally, not all the retail banks will be offering all these services. In particu­lar, some of the retail banks will he concentrating on services to personal and small business customers. Furthermore, the activities listed above relate to banking services, although the retail banks arc increasingly offering a range of 'non-banking' services, including unit trust operations, insurance broking, stockbroking and file provision of personal equity plans. These, together with advice and executor and trustee business (products dating back over half a century) are the non-funds based products. Profit margins arc often higher on such products, the provision of which is not sub­ject to the controls on liquidity and capital adequacy.

IV. Study the following text and translate the table into Ukrainian:

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