ABSTRACT
The subject of banks and building societies covers a vast terrain. Banking is not a well-defined, homogenous subject area and there are inherent difficulties in defining and separating the functions and activities of the myriad forms of banking operations. For example, the term ‘retail banking’ can be applied to both personal customers as well as business clients while the term ‘commercial banking’ can be used to describe the day to day money transmission functions such as cheque clearing through to the specialised corporate banking and clearing operations covering treasury functions and foreign exchange. Since the ‘Big Bang’ of 1986 it is increasingly difficult to view the various activities of the financial institutions as having discrete roles.
