World Bank

(noun)

a group of five financial organizations whose purpose is economic development and the elimination of poverty

Related Terms

Examples of World Bank in the following topics:

  • The World Bank

    • The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for various programs.
    • The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programs.
    • The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty.
    • The World Bank differs from the World Bank Group, in that the World Bank comprises only two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA), whereas the former incorporates these two in addition to three more: International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
    • Explain the role played by the World Bank in reducing poverty

  • Additional costs that result from waste

    • Stuart Hart, author of Capitalism at the Crossroads and a pioneer in thefield of ‘Inclusive Commerce', discovered through his research that most business strategies focus exclusively on the 800 million or so people that make up the industrial world while effectively ignoring the 4–5 billion people that comprise the bottom of the economic pyramid.
    • (Hart, Stuart, Capitalism at the Crossroads) Contrary to popular belief, the world's poorest countries have had zero or negative economic growth since the early 1980s and the years between 1990 and 1999 mark the slowest growing decade the world economy has seen in the past 40 years.
    • Meanwhile, in the world's poorest regions (areas like sub-Saharan Africa) $25,000 is spent every minute servicing the debt owed to rich countries.
    • Today, the World Bank estimates that the developing world spends around $13 in debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants.

  • Online Direct Banks

    • A direct bank is a bank without any branch network.
    • Direct banks were originally based on providing banking services via telephone.
    • One of the world's first fully functional direct banks was First Direct, which launched in the United Kingdom on October 1, 1989.
    • Upon realizing this, traditional banks began to offer limited online banking services.
    • The initial success of internet banking services provided by traditional banks led to the development of internet-only banks or "virtual banks. " These banks were designed without a traditional banking infrastructure, a cost-saving feature that allowed many of them to offer savings accounts with higher interest rates and loans with lower interest rates than most traditional banks.

  • Non-Bank Financial Institutions

    • A non-bank financial institution offers customers bank-related services such as payday lending, cashier's checks, and check cashing.
    • A non-bank financial institution (NBFI) is a financial institution that does not have a full banking license or is not supervised by a national or international banking regulatory agency.
    • NBFIs facilitate bank-related financial services, such as investments, risk pooling, contractual savings, and market brokering.
    • Despite the importance of financial services for both poverty reduction and equitable economic growth, experts estimate that only five percent of low-income households around the world have access to such services.
    • The international development community, with a vision it calls "financial sector deepening," is promoting the extension of diverse financial services by a wide range of bank and non-bank financial institutions to ever larger numbers of low-income and middle-class households around the world.

  • Three examples

    • Yunus's solution was to help poor people help themselves by creating a new financial institution called the Grameen Bank (grameen means ‘village').
    • Currently, the Grameen Bank provides over $445 million in small loans each year ($10 to $50 at a time) to those who need it most.
    • It operates by visiting its customers rather than having them come to the bank.
    • Far from being unable or unwilling to pay back their loans, those that borrow money from the Grameen Bank pay back their borrowings at a higher rate than any other group of borrowers in the world.
    • Profits from the GrameenPhone project are expected to rise to over $100 million despite the fact that the company operates in a region of the world where the average yearly wage is only $286.

  • Electronic Banking

    • Electronic banking includes such services as ATMs, direct deposits, electronic fund transfers, and online banking.
    • Possibly the most popular advance in banking through the use of technology is online banking.
    • Online banking services include:
    • Banks have found online banking so much cheaper than traditional in-bank methods that some have encouraged depositors and other customers to bank from home or via machines by charging them fees for the privilege of talking to a teller!
    • So-called click-and-mortar, or hybrid, banks appear more viable than completely virtual banks at present.

  • Commercial Banks

    • For the most part, the term commercial bank refers to divisions of banks that deal primarily with mid-sized to large businesses.
    • Banking is, in many ways, in the business of risk.
    • There are a few types of risks banks encounter, which are useful in understanding how banks function:
    • This image demonstrated the ongoing consolidation of the banking industry, through displaying the overall assets owned by the largest 5 banks.
    • Perceive the role of commercial banks from the business sense, and recognize the variety of risks banks encounter as a result

  • Balance of Payments

    • Balance of payments (BOP) accounts are an accounting record of all monetary transactions between a country and the rest of the world.
    • Balance of payments (BOP) accounts are an accounting record of all monetary transactions between a country and the rest of the world.
    • Then the net change per year in the central bank's foreign exchange reserves is sometimes called the balance of payments surplus or deficit.
    • The central bank does not intervene with a pure float to protect or devalue its currency, it allows the rate to be set by the market.
    • The central bank's foreign exchange reserves do not change.

  • Control of the Money Supply

    • Examples of Central Banks include the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Canada, shown here .
    • Commercial banks, as required by the central bank, must keep a fraction of all accepted deposits on reserve either in bank vaults or in central bank deposits.
    • A nation's central bank is also responsible for supplying commercial banks with enough currency to meet consumer demand.
    • Under fractional reserve banking, a nation's central bank is responsible for holding a certain fraction of all deposits as cash or on account with the central bank.
    • Clockwise from top-left: Federal Reserve, Bank of England, European Central Bank, Bank of Canada.

  • The Export-Import Bank of the United States

    • The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) is the official export credit agency of the United States federal government.
    • The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) is the official export credit agency of the United States federal government.
    • Its Charter spells out the Bank's authorities and limitations.
    • The Working Capital Guarantee program provides loan guarantees to banks willing to lend to exporting companies.
    • Explain the purpose of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank)