1.1 Financial institutions

present) with which to increase its production of loans only if it offers a higher rate of

interest or better service (than at present). Whatever it does to get the extra deposit

is likely to cost more than was involved in getting the previous marginal business.

Making the assumption that nancial rms are prot maximisers, however, does not

mean that we have to think of nancial rms operating according to the model of

perfect competition. Financial rms tend to be large and we shall see in section 1.1.3

that this is because economies of scale are very common in the production of nancial

products. This has inevitably led, and continues to lead, to situations where some

nancial business is dominated by a few, large organisations. In such cases we can

observe many of the characteristics which oligopolistic theories of the rm would lead

us to expect, for example, little apparent competition over prices but a great deal of

effort going into marketing and product differentiation.

We can move even further away from the model of perfect competition and still stay

on fairly familiar ground. We can drop the assumption of prot maximisation. There

have been occasions in the recent past, particularly involving the major retail banks,

when it has looked to outsiders as if decisions have been made to pursue other object-

ives, at least in the short run. These other objectives might have been to increase

market share at the expense of competitors, or to achieve a rate of growth (measured

by the number of account holders) greater than that of their rivals. Obviously, this

sort of behaviour is possible only if a certain level of prot has already been achieved

and is reasonably secure, but it is quite different from rigorous prot maximisation.

Even so, this still leaves the behaviour of nancial rms looking very much like that

of many other types of rm.

While it is important to bear in mind these similarities between nancial and

other types of rm, there is of course much that is distinctive about the business

of nancial rms: their products, and people’s reasons for buying the products, are

different from those of manufacturing and retail rms. For example, the decision

to buy a nancial ‘product’ often involves making a judgement about events which

might develop quite a long way into the future. This is not necessary when buying

goods for everyday consumption.

Furthermore, there are also signicant differences between the products offered

by nancial rms. One distinction which is very commonly made, for example, lies

between ‘deposit-taking institutions’ (DTIs) and ‘non-deposit-taking institutions’

(NDTIs). Deposit-taking institutions are organisations such as banks and building

societies, whose liabilities (assets to lenders) are primarily deposits. These can be with-

drawn at short (sometimes zero) notice and usually form part of the national money

supply. Non-deposit-taking institutions are organisations such as life assurance com-

panies whose liabilities are promises to pay funds to savers only in response to

a specied event. Unless the specied event occurs, it is very difcult to withdraw

these funds and there is usually a considerable nancial penalty for savers who do

so. Similarly, contributions to a pension fund cannot be easily withdrawn until the

pension falls due for payment. We shall see in Chapters 3 and 4 that these differences

in the ease with which savers can demand repayment have a major effect on what

DTIs and NDTIs can do with the funds at their disposal.

The two types of intermediaries are shown in Box 1.2.

5

....

FINM_C01.qxd 1/18/07 11:18 AM Page 6

Chapter 1 • Introduction: the nancial system

Box 1.2Some deposit and non-deposit-taking intermediaries

Deposit takers	Non-deposit takers
Banks – Retail banks	Insurance companies
– Investment banks	Pension funds
– Overseas banks	Unit trusts
Building societies	Investment trusts