Financial services refer to services that deal with the management of personal or business finances. The most common types of financial services are described below.
Banking services: These services include safe keep of money, issuance of checkbooks, money deposit and withdrawal facility in person and at ATMs, electronic transfers of funds, and distribution of debit and credit cards. They also include provisioning of overdraft agreements, facilitation of standing orders and direct debits and notary services.
Private banking services: These services are offered exclusively to selective high net worth individuals. They include wealth management and tax and estate planning.
Lending services: Lending services offer a variety of loans, including personal use, automobile, mortgage and business loans. They also refinance existing loans.
Debt Management services: Debt management services involve a designated third party assisting debtors with repayment of their debts. Many companies specializing in credit counseling offer debt management services to help people or companies with heavy debt to get their financial situations under control.
Foreign Exchange services: These services include currency exchange, international wire transfers and foreign currency banking. Foreign exchange services are generally provided by banks and specialized foreign exchange dealers.
Asset Management services: Professional asset management firms provide services to handle a diverse array of assets, such as cash, properties, bonds, and stock investments, which form a part of many people's portfolios.
Insurance services: These services include underwriting of various types of personal and commercial insurance plans, such as life, travel, retirement, health, disability, property and casualty insurance. Insurance services also include policy shopping services provided by insurance brokers. Moreover, these services include reinsurance plans for insurers themselves, which protect them from heavy losses.
Intermediation or Advisory services: These services are provided by brokerages through stock and discount brokers. These brokers help investors to buy or sell shares in the stock markets. The smaller brokerages mainly target individual investors. Larger full service brokerages help to carry out trades for customers who have large amounts of money to invest, such as investment management funds, large companies and wealthy individuals.
Venture Capital services: Venture capital services are provided by specialized venture capital firms. These firms pool investment money from several investors and invest it in new businesses. They provide a part of the new businesses' equity to the investors. These venture capital firms return back profits after some time by trading off the entire businesses to other parties or selling their shares in the stock markets.
The financial services described above form a very big industry on their own. They are one of the largest employment providers in the developed world countries.
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