MSG Team's other articles

11280 Single Stage FCFF Model to Equity Valuation

Just like we have the single stage Free Cash Flow to the Firm (FCFF) model, we also have the Free Cash Flow to Equity model. This model also is not used by analysts in advanced calculations. Rather it is used for the most rudimentary back of the envelope calculations for deriving the equity valuation of […]

11925 Wholesale Financial Markets

The financial services industry can be divided into two sectors viz, the retail and the wholesale sector. On one hand, there is the retail sector, which provides a wide variety of deposit-taking and loan-related financial services to the common people. On the other hand, there is the wholesale sector that provides services to institutions. These […]

9804 Impairment in Sporting Franchises and Player Contracts

In the previous two articles, we have already established that the sporting industry has this unique practice of recognizing human players as intangible assets on their balance sheet. We also know that the value of these intangible assets is also routinely amortized just like other intangible assets. In short, the player contracts are treated exactly […]

11407 The Strategic Financial Planning Process

The strategic financial planning process is different in the sense that it combines the functions of strategy formulation as well as financial planning. For many years, these two processes have been considered to be separate in most organizations around the world. Strategic financial planning merges these processes and created a hybrid approach. In a broad […]

11390 The Story Behind the L&T- Mindtree Takeover Bid

The Indian stock market is abuzz with the news of a hostile takeover. Larsen and Toubro, which is one of the largest and the most iconic information technology firms in the country is trying to forcefully acquire Mindtree which is a medium-sized information technology company. The news is abuzz about how Mindtree promoters do not […]

Search with tags

  • No tags available.

The Difference between Retail, Corporate, and Investment Banking

Most of us when dealing with banks usually walk into the branch and get our work done we usually do not bother whether it is retail banking branch or a corporate banking branch. The difference between retail and corporate banking is that retail banking serves individuals and entities that are not corporates whereas corporate banking deals with large corporates who want to bank with that institution.

The other end of the spectrum is the investment banking, which deals with high priced and low volumes deals like arranging for mergers and acquisitions, takeovers, and other deals aimed at the top notch of the management in the corporates.

Further, it must be mentioned that whereas retail banking is volumes driven, corporate banking is a combination of volumes and size of the transactions, investment banking is purely driven by the size of the deals where volumes are usually low as the lack of it is made up by the fees earned by the investment bankers in individual deals. This means that the commissions on retail and corporate banking range from low to medium whereas for investment banking they range from high to very high.

The Components of the Retail, Corporate, and Investment Banking

Now that we have discussed the basic differences between the three arms of banks, we can now turn to the components of the three arms.

Retail banking involves accepting deposits and giving loans to individuals and entities who are not corporates though in many countries, it is the practice to include organizations that resemble corporates in retail banking.

The growth of corporate banking has been mainly driven by the need of the banks and the corporate sector to deal in foreign exchange transactions, to hedge their portfolios and in general, cater to the banking needs of the corporates that extend into other realms like deposits and loans of sizes that are very large.

On the other hand, investment banking caters to the equity markets, the bond markets, the deals involving mergers, acquisitions, and the portfolio management as well.

The point to be noted about the three arms of banking is that they comprise each customer segment that banks are supposed to cater to. As retail deals with individuals and organizations in some cases, corporate banking deals exclusively with the big corporates and investment banking deals with the mega deals that organizations do.

The Rise of Private Banking in Recent Years

In recent years, there has been a new area that banks are targeting and this is private banking or banking for the HNIs or the High Networth Individuals. This category of banking is purely directed towards individuals, entities, and trusts that have lot of money (indeed a fortune compared to retail consumers) which are then managed by the private bankers by assuring certain rates of return and rates of return above that that are determined by the performance of the portfolio.

It needs to be mentioned that private banking sometimes encompasses all the other three arms as the presence of high Networth individuals and entities can include rich retail banking customers, corporates and trusts that need their wealth to be managed, and finally clients who are mega rich in the same way investment bankers transact mega deals.

How each arm of the Banks makes money ?

Apart from these differences, it must be mentioned that the other aspect about banking is that it follows the simple formula of determining the difference between the rate of interest it charges on its loans and the rate of interest that it pays to depositors. This is known as spread and the difference between the three arms of banking is that the spreads are different for each arm as well as the size of the transaction, which means that the multiplication of the spread and the size of the deal is the profit that the banks earn. This explains the difference in the various arms of the deals where low volumes are made up by the huge size of the deals in investment banking and the lesser sizes of the transactions are made up by the volumes in retail banking.

Article Written by

MSG Team

An insightful writer passionate about sharing expertise, trends, and tips, dedicated to inspiring and informing readers through engaging and thoughtful content.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Articles

What is Cost of Equity? – Meaning, Concept and Formula

MSG Team

Cross Border Credit Reporting

MSG Team

What is Corporate Finance? – Meaning and Important Concepts

MSG Team