The Roles that a Financial System Performs Finance Essay

When the individuals, business and government give instruction to the financial system, financial system need to respond and do transfer funds to other parties. For example, when a traveler uses the credit card to obtain cash in a foreign country, or when a firm needs to pay for the import from abroad, the financial system will complete the transaction. Financial systems make it be possible for countries’ government to deposits fund straightly into individuals’ bank accounts.

Moreover, financial system allows the transfer funds between two different countries to become easy and cheap, regardless any currency the payer desires to use. The traveler loved this most acutely when communications are disrupted and the banking machines on which she is relying for her weekend expenditures do not dispense the cash she expected to obtain. The classifications of savers are the individual who earn more than they spend and businesses whose profits exceed their capital expenditures. We assume that, the money which been spend will not be the saving. When individuals save, they usually allocate some of their surplus funds in cash or non-interest-bearing deposits, some in return forms such as interest-bearing securities or deposits or other securities expected to yield a combination of dividend income and capital gains. In the developed countries, individuals’ saving is assigned among bank deposits, investments in pension and mutual funds, and marketable securities. Normally, the proportions of individuals will distribute between those investments is according to the average returns each type yields. It means that, the greater average returns always mean greater risk as well, and consumers make tradeoffs between expected return and the risk of earning that return. Businesses are just like individual who hold a combination of liquid assets having no or low returns, and other financial assets such as securities, typically bearing higher returns. However the goal of investment between businesses and individual are different, as a result the particular combinations of financial assets they hold are also totally different.

For example, businesses and individual always will consider at least to some extent on how unpredictable it’s short term cash inflows and outflows are likely to be. Most of the savers want a reasonable return on their saving, and they do ensure their funds are invested safely. Since most of the investors are risk averse, they demand asset return matching with the perceived risk of investment.

The important conclusion of modern financial theory is the investor demand a yield premium that increase with investment risk. A simple example is individuals tend to buy stock rather than bonds because they consider stocks to be riskier and have higher expectation than bonds. Although most of the investors behave as a risk averters, but we still can find the clashing behavior cases. For example, some saver didn’t pay much attention on the potential risk when faced with an investment promising an unusually high return. Saver are fail to recognize that the promised rewards are always taking great risks. When the financial institution is paying extremely high rate of return to the depositors, and it is growing extremely quickly, you will witness the example of savers are actually taking very great risks.

One of the example happened in the 1990s notable frauds were perpetrated in both Albania and Romania, with some depositors losing as much as two years’ income when the fraudulent institutions failed. Primary and secondary transactions Figure: Flow of funds diagram Liabilities Assets Regulation Sectors typically supplying funds Households Governments Reset of the world Sectors typically using funds Non-financial firms Governments Reset of the world Financial System Financial Markets Financial Intermediaries Government (Fiscal policy) Central Bank (Monetary policy)The purpose of financial system is raises funds from the lenders or investors, making them available to the borrower or other users. Lenders and other investors are called suppliers of funds while the borrower and other users are called demand of funds. These funds can be either uses for finance the current expenditure for consume good, implement the plant and equipment for business firms. The transactions are measured through a system of accounts known as funds flow accounts or financial flow accounts. As Edwin H. Neave stated in his book, “funds flow accounts is trace net borrowing or lending transactions between major sectors in the economy. The sectors defined in the accounts are households and unincorporated business, private non-financial business, government, private financial business and the rest of the world”. The figure above show that the funds financing new investment flow mainly through intermediaries, with only a small proportion being transmitted directly through financial markets. The economic agent who spends more than the current earnings must either sell assets or borrow funds to finance the difference.

Primary transactions are the activity deals for raising new funds and involve creating new financial instruments. The new securities can be either shares, bonds, promissory notes, loan contracts and etc. These securities may be sold to investors through the securities markets or may be acquired by financial institutions which advance funds directly to their clients. The Primary transactions is important because their effects on the economic growth. If the domestic financial system does not finance certain kinds of deals, then the capital formation will be inhibited-unless the necessary funds can be raised offshore. Secondary transactions are the activity deals involving trades in existing securities. It represents a reallocation of existing financing rather than the creation of new arrangement. The secondary market purchases of securities are used to invest surplus funds; secondary market sakes of securities are uses to raise funds.

Normally, secondary transactions take place in the stock markets, the bond markets or the money markets. The instruments representing loans provided by banks or other intermediaries are rarely resold in the marketplace. The company’s or government’s securities which active in secondary trading are improves the liquidity of its primary securities issues and helps evaluate new information about the issuer. Why we say secondary transaction will enhance the liquidity of primary issues? This is because they indicate it will likely prove relatively easy to trade the securities at some subsequent point in time. Risk Management Instead of being used to raise new funds, some financial deals are struck with the principal purpose of dividing up and trading risks. Although risk management is often regarded as having emerged in the 1970s and 1980s,that view stems principally from observations of the very rapid growth of risk trading during those decades. Actually, the idea of risk management is familiar to some of the financiers for a much longer time.

For example, some risks have been insured since long trading first became a reality. After the problem happen, the insurance company were formed principally to assume risks that people were unwilling to accept. The clients is actually selling risk to the insurance company, when individual or business are buy a policy from insurance company to protect their loss through fire or damage. At the real world, the risks assumed by insurance companies are not actively traded.

Other instruments such as commodities futures have long been used to trade risks actively. For example, crop growers sell commodities futures allowing them to hedge against the risks of fluctuating crop prices, while speculators buy the same futures contracts to assume the risks. The origin of the commodities futures markets is by securities firms that were both familiar and comfortable with the idea of secondary through market trading. In the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the risk management had expanse greatly in volume and importance. The first country is United States, and then the next country is follow by Great Britain, Japan and other countries.

The shift in demand for risk management and the change in the supply of instruments suitable for risk management can result in the trade in derivative securities. From the demand view, the risk management becomes more popular as the financial environment at year 1969 to year 1990.At the same time, the internationalization of business implied very fast increases in the foreign currency transactions, increasing the demand for managing these kinds of risks. The cases on late 1970s and earlier 1980s show that the increasing strength of the Japanese yen make the Japanese investors suffered large capital losses on their US dollar denominated investment, because many of them took the form of US government securities. From the supply view, market trading of risk management instruments as a derivatives security is based on the same considerations which led insurance companies to write liabilities and commodities traders to purchase futures contracts. In the earlier 1970s, there have 2 important supply side was changed; technological is increasing the risk of the trading. First, traders in the instruments learned the importance of standardizing terms, which lowered the costs of both contact origination and of subsequent trading. Second, traders learned the importance of guaranteeing contact performance. Secondary market risk trading services the primary undertaking of risky projects, just as secondary markets for securities improve the functioning of primary markets for raising funds. An economy with access to cheap and easy secondary trading of risk instruments will assume more viable risky projects than one without secondary markets, mainly because the parties originally undertaking to face the risk find it easier to divide into different components that are attractive to purchasers with specialized requirements. Finance and economic activity When we study macroeconomic, we know that the major determinants of economic activity are consumption, investment and government spending. In particular, the changes of interest rate have great impact on the growth of economic. Moreover, the kind of investment undertaken affects the kind of productive capability the economy acquires. By making primary financings easier to arrange, the financial system can encourage economic growth.

Financiers do not directly stimulate capital formation by deciding to put up funds for projects, but they can certainly constrain decisions to acquire long term capital if they refuse to provide funding. If the funds are not available domestically, business can seek financing offshore, but business that is unknown to the financiers of a foreign country may not always be successful in obtaining funds. Economic growth can also stimulate financial system growth. Both financial system developments, and many individual financing decisions, are driven by attempts to respond to changing demands for funds. In addition, the financial system evolves to overcome emerging impediments to financing new kinds of deals. Let talk 1 example, over 1970s a world-wide increase in the demand for more risk management services was met by increased trading activity and the development of many new risk management products, as already mentioned. The interest costs and the availability of finance differ between countries. The difference in financiers ‘capabilities affect the availability and the cost of finance. A second source of differences in cost and availability is the cost of producing deal information in differing milieu.

High financing costs or limited availability of funds signal financial underdevelopment. We can say that by improving the economy’s growth prospects means improving its existing financial system capabilities, its access to offshore finance, or both. The purpose of the interest rate is to serve the overcoming financial underdevelopment, but that is not an easy task since it requires structure up new capabilities to screen and govern financial deals. Financial system development is most likely to occur in an already sophisticated financial system, because that is where innovation is least costly and most likely to be profitable. In the most developed economies, establish large business with profitable track records do not have much difficulty finding financing. Normally, such a business is more tend important to the consideration on the cost. Smaller businesses’ short term financing needs can also be satisfied relatively easily, at least so long as the business has marketable assets to offer as security.

Small businesses have no difficulty to raising the funds to financing the acquisitions of inventory or accounts receivable, being able to rely on bank loans or trade credit to do so. Financial systems vary in their capability to fund innovative or familiar projects backed only by uncertain earnings or illiquid assets. Other economies have relative few imaginative financiers capable of seeking at such kinds of deals constructively as well as critically.

Countries which have foster divers financing arrangements normally do a better job of encouraging creative. The more likely the economy will be able to maintain international competitiveness through updating its productive capacity is follow the more diverse the capabilities of a financial system and the more its regulatory climate encourage responsible experimentation. For the economies, the growth is very important, but particularly to less developed ones where both infrastructural and business capital are likely to be in relatively short supply. This is the truth that financial system development is very difficult in the undeveloped countries, placing them at additional disadvantages that can only be overcome with patiently building up elements of a sound financial system over time. When the undeveloped countries rely on the external capital, the decision of offshore financiers can determine the kinds of projects that will be funded, and it will not always be the case that the most highly productive projects are first in line to obtain whatever limited funds are available from the offshore sources.

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