An accepting house was a primarily British institution which specialised in the acceptance and guarantee of

bills of exchange A negotiable instrument is a document guaranteeing the payment of a specific amount of money, either on demand, or at a set time, whose payer is usually named on the document. More specifically, it is a document contemplated by or consisting of a ...

thereby facilitating the lending of money. They took on other functions as the use of bills declined, returning to their original wider function of

merchant banking A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodi ...

. The 'Accepting Houses' in the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London fr ...

had representation in Westminster by the Accepting Houses

Committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...

which ensured policy coordination between them, the UK Treasury and the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...

. Bills endorsed by members of the Committee were originally eligible for rediscount at the Bank of England, although this right was eventually extended to other banks in the UK and abroad. The term accepting house was more of an indication of status rather than function. Examples of UK accepting houses were

Hambros Bank Hambros Bank was a British bank based in London. The Hambros bank was a specialist in Anglo-Scandinavian business with expertise in trade finance and investment banking, and was the sole banker to the Scandinavian kingdoms for many years. The Bank ...

Hill Samuel Hill Samuel is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group's Offshore Private Banking unit. It was formerly a leading British merchant bank and financial services firm before the takeover by TSB Group Plc. in 1987, which itself merged with ...

Morgan Grenfell Morgan, Grenfell & Co. was a leading London-based investment bank regarded as one of the oldest and once most influential British merchant banks. It had its origins in a merchant banking business commenced by George Peabody. Junius Spencer Morgan ...

Rothschild Rothschild () is a name derived from the German ''zum rothen Schild'' (with the old spelling "th"), meaning "with the red sign", in reference to the houses where these family members lived or had lived. At the time, houses were designated by sign ...

, J. Henry Schroder Wagg, Arbuthnot Latham, Seligman Brothers, William Brandts and

S.G. Warburg S. G. Warburg & Co. was a London-based investment bank. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The firm was acquired by the Swiss Bank Corporation in 1995 and ultimately became a part of UB ...

. Most accepting houses were absorbed into larger banking entities during the 1980s and 1990s.

References

Banking in the United Kingdom {{Bank-stub