Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) is the industry's umbrella term for companies that provide a range of such financial products or services. This includes

universal bank A universal bank participates in many kinds of banking activities and is both a commercial bank and an investment bank as well as providing other financial services such as insurance.commercial bank A commercial bank is a financial institution which accepts deposits from the public and gives loans for the purposes of consumption and investment to make profit. It can also refer to a bank, or a division of a large bank, which deals with cor ...

insurance companies Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

, non-banking financial companies, cooperatives, pensions funds,

mutual fund A mutual fund is a professionally managed investment fund that pools money from many investors to purchase securities. The term is typically used in the United States, Canada, and India, while similar structures across the globe include the SICAV i ...

s and other smaller financial entities. The Banking part of BFSI may include

core banking Core banking is a banking service provided by a group of networked bank branches where customers may access their bank account and perform basic transactions from any of the member branch offices. Core banking is often associated with retail b ...

, retail, private, corporate, investment and cards. Financial services may include stock-broking,

payment gateway A payment gateway is a merchant service provided by an e-commerce application service provider that authorizes credit card or direct payments processing for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar. The p ...

s, mutual funds. Insurance covers both

life insurance Life insurance (or life assurance, especially in the Commonwealth of Nations) is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer or assurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death ...

and

general insurance General insurance or non-life insurance policy, including automobile and homeowners policies, provide payments depending on the loss from a particular financial event. General insurance is typically defined as any insurance that is not determine ...

. This term is commonly used by

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

(IT), information technology-enabled services (ITES),

business process outsourcing Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...

(BPO) companies and technical/professional services firms that manage data processing, application testing and software development activities in this domain.

History

The global BFSI Industry faced serious turmoil during the early 21st century, when a series of crises like the

subprime mortgage crisis The United States subprime mortgage crisis was a multinational financial crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010 that contributed to the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, 2007–2008 global financial crisis. It was triggered by a large decline ...

in the US, and the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

worldwide, that began in 2008, gave a huge setback, resulting in negative growth. A 2013 report said that the industry was coming back on track.

References

{{Reflist Financial services organizations

History

See also

References