In: Finance
Describe the role that financial intermediaries play in the financial markets and explain why there are so many different types of intermediaries.
Financial intermediaries bring sources of funds to user who
would like to avail the funds. They play a very important role in
bringing the idle sitting funds to the people requiring it and thus
increasing effeciency and contributing to the economic growth. In
other words they facilitate the differeing needs of lenders and
borrowers. They help in a way that borrowers rather than going to
individual lenders go to a financial intermediaries in order to
acquire funds needed. Since they specialize in this, they offer
competitive rates and take care of repaying abilities of the
borrowers. They provide a low search cost and spread risk between
different borrowers. They also thus provide economies of scale and
convinience of amounts to a large extent.
There are various types of financial intermediaries, Banks,
insurance companies, Fianncial advisors, Credit union, Investment
trusts etc. They are present to cater to different fund needs. For
example a firm if requires loan will go to a bank however an
individual requiring insurance will go to an insurance company
because his requirement of funds is different. Each type of
intermediary caters to differing needs.