Other financial services[edit]

Bank cards - include both credit cards and debit cards.According to the Nilson Report, Bank
Of America is the largest issuer of bank cards.

Credit card machine services and networks - Companies which provide credit card machine
and payment networks call themselves "merchant card providers".

Intermediation or advisory services - These services involve stock brokers (private client
services) and discount brokers. Stock brokers assist investors in buying or selling shares.
Primarily internet-based companies are often referred to as discount brokerages, although many
now have branch offices to assist clients. These brokerages primarily target individual investors.
Full service and private client firms primarily assist and execute trades for clients with large
amounts of capital to invest, such as large companies, wealthy individuals, and investment
management funds.

Private equity - Private equity funds are typically closed-end funds, which usually take
controlling equity stakes in businesses that are either private, or taken private once acquired.
Private equity funds often use leveraged buyouts (LBOs) to acquire the firms in which they
invest. The most successful private equity funds can generate returns significantly higher than
provided by the equity markets

Venture capital is a type of private equity capital typically provided by professional, outside
investors to new, high-growth-potential companies in the interest of taking the company to an
IPO or trade sale of the business.

Angel investment - An angel investor or angel (known as a business angel or informal

investor in Europe), is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually
in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. A small but increasing number of angel
investors organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share resources and pool
their investment capital.

Conglomerates - A financial services company, such as a universal bank, that is active in

more than one sector of the financial services market e.g. life insurance, general insurance,
health insurance, asset management, retail banking, wholesale banking, investment banking,
etc. A key rationale for the existence of such businesses is the existence of diversification
benefits that are present when different types of businesses are aggregated i.e. bad things don't

always happen at the same time. As a consequence, economic capital for a conglomerate is
usually substantially less than economic capital is for the sum of its parts.

Financial market utilities - Organisations that are part of the infrastructure of financial
services, such as stock exchanges, clearing houses, derivative and
commodityexchanges and payment systems such as real-time gross settlement systems
or interbank networks.

Debt resolution is a consumer service that assists individuals that have too much debt to pay
off as requested, but do not want to file bankruptcy and wish to pay off their debts owed. This
debt can be accrued in various ways including but not limited to personal loans, credit cards or
in some cases merchant accounts.

Factoring

Financial crime[edit]
UK[edit]
Fraud within the financial industry costs the UK (regulated by the FSA) an estimated 14bn a year
and it is believed a further 25bn is laundered by British institutions.[6]

Market share[edit]
US[edit]
The U.S. finance industry comprised only 10% of total non-farm business profits in 1947, but it grew
to 50% by 2010. Over the same period, finance industry income as a proportion of GDP rose from
2.5% to 7.5%, and the finance industry's proportion of all corporate income rose from 10% to 20%.
The mean earnings per employee hour in finance relative to all other sectors has closely mirrored
the share of total U.S. income earned by the top 1% income earners since 1930. The mean salary in
New York City's finance industry rose from $80,000 in 1981 to $360,000 in 2011, while average New
York City salaries rose from $40,000 to $70,000. In 1988, there were about 12,500 U.S. banks with
less than $300 million in deposits, and about 900 with more deposits, but by 2012, there were only
4,200 banks with less than $300 million in deposits in the U.S., and over 1,801 with more.
The financial services industry constitutes the largest group of companies in the world in terms of
earnings and equity market capitalization. However it is not the largest category in terms of revenue
or number of employees. It is also a slow growing and extremely fragmented industry, with the
largest company (Citigroup), only having a 3% US market share.[7] In contrast, the largest home
improvement store in the US, Home Depot, has a 30% market share, and the largest coffee
house Starbucks has a market share of 32%