1. Commercial banks must be established according to law.
2. The main business of commercial banks is to absorb deposits and issue loans, and to operate other intermediary businesses, such as settlement business. Other non-bank financial institutions, such as insurance companies and finance companies, do not belong to the category of commercial banks because they do not handle deposit and loan business.
Commercial banks, like general industrial and commercial enterprises, are profit-oriented enterprises. Commercial banks have their own funds needed to engage in business. It operates in accordance with the law, is responsible for its own profits and losses, takes profit as the goal, and assumes external responsibilities with all its corporate property. Commercial banks take profit maximization as their business purpose. Its pursuit of profit is: establishing or operating commercial banks to bring profits; Whether to handle a business or receive a customer depends on whether he can bring profits to the bank.
4. Commercial banks are special enterprises different from general industrial and commercial enterprises. Its particularity is reflected in the different business objects. Industrial and commercial enterprises deal in commodities with certain use value and engage in commodity production and circulation; Commercial banks deal in a special commodity-currency. Therefore, a commercial bank is a special enterprise-financial enterprise, which is different from industrial and commercial enterprises.
5. Financial enterprises are also different from specialized banks and other financial institutions. Specialized banks only focus on the business within the specified scope and provide specialized services. Trust and investment companies, leasing companies and other financial institutions have a narrow business scope and do not belong to commercial banks. The business of commercial banks is comprehensive, including debt business, such as deposit and issuance of financial bonds, asset business, such as lending and securities investment, and intermediary business, such as settlement. Therefore, the functions of commercial banks are more comprehensive than those of other professional banks and financial institutions, and they can provide customers with all financial services except trust and investment and stock business.
(B) the functions of commercial banks
Commercial banks mainly have four functions:
(1) Functions of Credit Intermediary
Credit intermediary is the most basic function of commercial banks, which can best reflect the characteristics of their business activities. The essence of this function is to concentrate the idle business in the society on the bank through the debt business of the bank, and then invest in various economic sectors through the asset business. Commercial banks are intermediaries or representatives of both borrowers and borrowers of monetary funds to achieve financial intermediation, and obtain interest income from the difference between the cost of absorbing funds, loan interest income and investment income, thus forming bank profits. Commercial banks have become "big businessmen" buying and selling "capital goods". Commercial banks realize financing between capital surplus and deficiency through the function of credit intermediary, without changing the ownership of monetary capital, but only the right to use it.
(2) the function of payment intermediary
In addition to acting as a credit intermediary for financing, commercial banks also perform the function of fund management. Through the transfer of deposits in the account, it pays on behalf of customers, handles cash for customers on the basis of deposits, and becomes the currency custodian, cashier and payment agent of industrial and commercial enterprises, groups and individuals. Taking commercial banks as the center, a payment chain and the relationship between creditor's rights and debts with no beginning and no end are formed in the economic process.
(3) Credit creation function (loans are converted into deposits, and demand deposits are the main part of money supply, so enterprises use liabilities as currency circulation, which has credit creation function).
Commercial banks have created the function of credit creation on the basis of credit intermediary and payment intermediary. Commercial banks can absorb all kinds of deposits and issue loans with all kinds of deposits absorbed. On the basis of cheque circulation and transfer, loans are converted into deposits. On the basis of not withdrawing cash or completely withdrawing cash from such deposits, we will increase the sources of funds for commercial banks and eventually form derivative deposits several times as many as the original deposits in the whole banking system. For a long time, commercial banks are the only financial institutions that can absorb demand deposits and open checking accounts. On this basis, transfer and cheque circulation, commercial banks came into being. In order to create and shrink demand deposits through their own credit activities, and demand deposits are the main part of money supply, commercial banks can use their liabilities as currency circulation, which has the function of credit creation.
(4) Financial service function
With the development of economy, the business environment of industrial and commercial enterprises is becoming more and more complicated, and the business competition between banks is becoming more and more fierce. Because of extensive contacts and well-informed information, especially the wide application of computers in banking business, banks have the conditions to provide information services to customers, consulting services, decision support services for enterprises and other services came into being. The development of specialized production and circulation in industrial and commercial enterprises requires that many money businesses originally belonging to enterprises be transferred to banks. Personal consumption has also developed from simple money and goods transactions to transfer settlement. Modern social life puts forward many requirements for financial services of commercial banks. Under the strong impetus of business competition, commercial banks are also constantly exploring service areas, further promoting the expansion of asset-liability business by developing financial business, and combining asset-liability business with financial services to open up new business areas. In modern economic life, financial services have become an important function of commercial banks.