What are the main Western financial institutions?

Western developed countries after hundreds of years of capitalist commercial economic development, real estate financial institutions have developed into a relatively complete, fully functional, complex and sophisticated internal composition of the system. With the continuous development of the economy of the developed countries in the West, the contradiction of the severe shortage of housing has been overcome, and its attention is increasingly focused on the quality of housing and improving the old housing, real estate financial institutions, the status of the favorable changes. 1. The United States In the United States, in order to encourage the private purchase and construction of housing, the government generally take the support of lending institutions to reduce the loan interest rate year by year and some other ways to stimulate the United States of America's real estate financing mechanism continues to be sound and perfect, from the pennant situation, its financing methods are flexible and effective, the purchase and construction of housing can generally take advantage of the more convenient and preferential policies for real estate financing activities. There are three main types of real estate financial institutions in the United States, i.e., specialized credit institutions, commercial banks and non-commercial banks' savings and credit institutions. (1) the government professional credit institutions, which refers to the United States government to intervene and participate in real estate financing activities and the establishment of a permanent credit institutions, and some management functions, there are two major institutions. ① Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is the U.S. government in the mid-1960s established a "secondary mortgage institutions" in order to provide financing services for the private sector in a wider range of services. It provides financing to real estate buyers and builders primarily through three agencies under the supervision of the Department. These are the Federal Housing Administration, the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Government National Mortgage Association. These agencies do not lend directly, but rather provide and broker financing to institutions such as HSAs through a two-tier mortgage mechanism. When a HSA is short of funds, it may apply to a secondary institution for a loan secured by the borrower's mortgaged home (also known as a first mortgage). The second-tier institution can then use the first-tier collateral as security (also known as second-tier mortgage) and issue bonds to the society to raise funds. In this way, the United States Government has successfully opened up new channels for housing finance. Two-tier mortgages, on the one hand, through the public issuance of bonds, transform a portion of other forms of long-term funds, such as pensions and insurance premiums, into housing investment funds; on the other hand, through the process of the free sale and purchase of bonds, transform a portion of the residents' short-term savings into long-term funds. In recent years, the United States of America's secondary mortgage institutions have had considerable development in the scale of operation, for housing savings and loan associations and other real estate financial institutions to raise funds about 50% of today's U.S. housing finance industry as the main supplier of funds. ② Federal Home Loan Bank System. It was established in the 1930s, the system set up residential banks in 12 districts of the United States, becoming a government intervention and coordination of the housing industry financial system. The activities of these banks are controlled by the Board of Governors of the Federal Home Loan Banks, appointed by the President. All federally registered and many state-registered savings and loan associations are members of the System. Currently, about 20 percent of the mutual savings banks and some life insurance companies also participate in the System. The Board of Governors of the Federal Home Loan Banks, on behalf of the System's 12 regional banks, issues bonds and notes in the financial markets to raise funds to provide a primary market for the member institutions to which it belongs, so that there are no liquidity difficulties in times of credit crunch, and at the same time, to allow savings and loan associations within the System to discount to the System, to borrow from the System when deposit balances fall, and to repay the System when deposit balances rise. The system's residential banks, established in 12 districts, are primarily designed to absorb idle community funds and to make mortgage loans. Loans are made in many forms and for varying lengths of time, generally 30 years. During the loan period, the homeowner mortgages the real estate to the bank as a guarantee of regular debt service in the future in accordance with the contract, and if the homeowner is unable to repay the debt on time for some reason, the bank may foreclose on the homeowner's mortgage on the real estate in accordance with the law, and the homeowner loses his or her ownership rights to the real estate. The government often controls the development of the construction industry with measures to raise or lower interest rates in accordance with the national situation, in order to achieve the purpose of intervention and regulation of the entire economy. The U.S. government's residential savings and loan banks to carry out real estate mortgages is a major business in the U.S. financial market, occupying funds equivalent to the entire U.S. financial market, the total capital of 1/4. 1/5, accounting for the national real estate and construction industry, 4/5, and thus stabilizing the U.S. construction industry has played a huge role. (2) commercial banks in the United States of America's commercial banks were originally prohibited by law to engage in long-term real estate mortgages, because it is longer term (generally 15 to 25 years, the longest up to 35 years), poor liquidity. It has since been noted that real estate mortgages are almost exclusively repaid in installments, that their actual repayment periods are much shorter than their nominal repayment periods, and that the loans can be recovered when the homes are resold. In addition, in the housing finance system as a whole, there is a secondary market for banks to sell their residential mortgages, so that banks in need of funds to improve the liquidity of assets, coupled with the structure of bank deposits in the proportion of time deposits gradually increased, so that the United States banking law of commercial banks engaged in real estate mortgages, the restriction is gradually relaxed. For this reason, commercial banks also began to operate real estate mortgage business. At present, the United States commercial banks of real estate mortgage loans accounted for almost all of the financial system bank loans 1 / 3, commercial banks on the residential mortgage market has long since made the distinction between its and savings and credit institutions boundaries in practice has become blurred. As a result, commercial banks have also become an important channel in the U.S. housing finance system. (3) non-commercial bank savings and credit institutions non-commercial bank savings and credit institutions mainly absorb long-term savings deposits, and most of their funds are invested in longer-term real estate mortgages, which is the basis of the U.S. real estate financing system. Because of their special position, any change in their lending activities affects the overall pace of residential construction. Non-commercial bank savings and loan institutions take the following forms: ① Savings and loan associations. This institution, which is mutual and cooperative in nature or a joint-stock company, is organized primarily to encourage savings by opening a variety of savings accounts with high rates of interest and to provide more favorable loans for the construction, purchase, and maintenance of housing. One of the earliest savings and loan associations appeared in Philadelphia in 1831, and since then such institutions have gradually spread throughout the United States, and there are now about 4,600 of them, second only to the commercial banks of the United States in number and size. Depending on their characteristics, savings and loan associations can be categorized as mutual, joint-stock, insured, uninsured, federally registered and state-registered. Currently, there are approximately 2,000 savings and loan associations registered with the federal government and another 2,600 with the states. In order to maintain liquidity, savings and loan associations are required to have deposits with the Federal Home Loan Regional Banks (FHLBBs) and should also have deposits with the Federal Reserve Local Banks (FRLBs). For security, federally registered savings and loan associations must be insured by the Federal Reserve Loan Insurance Corporation. State-chartered savings and loan associations have the option to insure, with most of them choosing to insure with the Federal Reserve Loan Insurance Corporation and the remainder with state-operated foundations. The vast majority of the former savings and loan associations' lending business was in real estate mortgages, so their operations were highly dependent on the mortgage market and risky. Since 1982, the Savings and Loan Association has adopted variable-rate mortgages, shifting risk to the borrower, as well as other commercial and consumer loans, and has paid attention to improving its asset structure. In the future the association will remain the most dominant part of the U.S. real estate financing system. (7) Mutual savings banks. It is also a force to be reckoned with in the real estate financing system of the U.S. In the early 19th century, mutual savings and banks began to appear in Boston, Philadelphia and New York and other cities, mainly absorbing small savings and regular savings, and their management has been very sound. By the 1980s, mutual savings banks all participated in deposit insurance, with 70% insured with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the rest with state insurance foundations. In recent years, in the United States, in addition to the 10%. l5% of low-income housing borne by the government, the remaining 85%. 90% of housing has been built and operated by a number of private development corporations, and the capital needed to finance these privately operated dwellings is obtained in the form of real estate financing. In obtaining the funds, it is necessary to mortgage the real estate, so at present, the United States has 55 million homes actually owned by savings institutions, which are mainly savings and loan associations and mutual savings banks, which account for about 2/3 of the total number of homes in the United States. ③ Life insurance companies. In recent years, the life insurance company in the United States has been growing rapidly, and the company has focused a large amount of its investment on commercial mortgages for large office buildings, shopping centers and apartment buildings, while transferring sporadic residential mortgage business to local savings institutions and banks. At present, the company for real estate and corporate bonds on the investment accounted for 3/4 of the company's total assets. Since the 1970s, the development of financial institutions in Western countries appeared the following trends: 1. Continuous innovation in business and to the direction of integrated development. In order to meet the needs of economic development, financial institutions continue to introduce new financial products and financial services, in the business by specialization to the integrated development; at the same time, countries restructuring of the financial system and integration also makes the financial system of financial institutions by specialization to the integrated transformation. 2. The establishment of multinational banks makes the development of banks more internationalized. The development of multinational banks is a major manifestation of the innovation of financial institutions. This is accompanied by the development of multinational corporations, the development of international trade and economic globalization and integration and the emergence and expansion. 3. Reorganization of capital and operating structures in accordance with the Basel Accord. The banking industry in most countries has begun to control financial risks in accordance with the norms of behavior of the international banking industry put forward by the Basel Accord. 4. Mergers have become an effective means of restructuring modern commercial banks. In order to adapt to fierce competition, realize complementary advantages and expand new business areas, mergers form a new wave. 5. Banking financial institutions and non-banking financial institutions are constantly integrating to form a more massive large-scale composite financial institutions.