Economic Services Provided By The Finance Industry

Financial services are the economic services provided by the finance industry. This encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, accountancy companies, consumer-finance companies, stock brokerages, and investment funds, individual. 

Banks 

A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates credit. Lending activities can be performed either directly or indirectly through capital markets. Due to their importance in the financial stability of a country, banks are highly regulated in most countries. 

In South Africa (SA) the top five banks are ABSA, Capitec, FNB, Nedbank and Standard Bank. Amongst these banks Capitec Bank is the largest in SA in terms of the number of clients who use it as their main bank, according to the Publisher Audience Measure Survey (PAMS).  

Credit-card companies 

A credit card issuer is a bank or credit union who offers credit cards. When consumers make credit card purchases, the credit card issuer is responsible for sending payments to merchants for purchases made with credit cards from that bank. 

Examples of major credit card companies include Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Chase, Capital One and Wells Fargo. While Visa and Mastercard credit cards operate in almost all the countries of the world. 

Insurance companies 

These are companies that provide and sell insurance. They’re businesses that provide coverage, in the form of compensation resulting from loss, damages, injury, treatment or hardship in exchange for premium payments. The company calculates the risk of occurrence then determines the cost to replace (pay for) the loss to determine the premium amount. 

And insurance comes in many forms from being able to insure your pet, to celebrities insuring their most valuable body parts to the typical insurance of car, home and business. 

Accountancy companies 

They fulfill a broad range of accounting, auditing, tax and consulting duties also called cost, managerial, corporate or private accountants. Accountants can also specialise by industry, choosing to work in healthcare, for instance. Their clients include corporations, governments and individuals. 

They work in CPA firms, national, regional, local. They work in bookkeeping and tax services. They work in banks and other financial institutions, to even working from home such as controller, bookkeeper, accounting manager, etc.