Speech on Banking

Here is a speech I gave recently in Toastmasters Club. What comes to your mind when you think of banks. Many things come to mind. For one I am reminded of the interior of a bank building. Banks are brightly lit buildings. Where there are high counters. There are glass windows through which you can see clerks. There is no blaring music in a bank. At least so far I have never heard music in a bank building. It is a serious atmosphere. The decor inside a bank building is always subdued and muted. There is nothing loud or colorful in a bank. The clerks and managers are professionally dressed. If you want to deposit you stand in line until you reach the counter. If you want to withdraw you do the same. Sometimes in the front of the bank there is a marble board saying in gold letters which year the bank was established. Sometimes there is a statue of the founder of the bank. I vaguely remember my first savings bank account. You get a book that shows space for listing transactions. Withdrawals Deposits. There is a bank in the picturesque village of keechery. It is an old double storeyed building where a relative was a founder and manager. That bank would have provided a safe place to all the villagers to hold or save their life savings. A place where thieves do not break in. That place would have offered loans to the villagers for huge projects such as house construction or starting a small business. Or purchasing land or rubber plantation. The bank held something called chitties in which my parents were involved. You put money in for ten months or a year and one month during that you get a haul of the amount of money you put × the number of members in the scheme. The city I grew up in had ads for such funds seemingly everywhere. Any great family with some type of business interest was involved in such schemes. What does this tell about the land I grew up in. The land I grew up in had a robust economic life. Financial life economic life call it what you must reflects the health of a place. Somewhere along the way wealth has gotten a bad reputation. Too much emphasis on wealth makes you think you are materialistic unspiritual or focused on ostentatious living. But if you really think about it wealth put to good use can be used to build industries or some kind of organisation to provide jobs for poor people. It can be used to build a community center for a neighbor hood where the youth can gather or build a library where people of all ages can read. Banks are symptomatic of a community wish to put money to good use. In banks money is not squandered it is saved. In banks money can be borrowed for a worthy purpose. A householder a dad of a few kids can borrow money from the bank and build a house. The house can be beautiful. The children growing up in that pretty house can feel happy and comfortable because the house is comfortable. Parents of bright children can borrow money to send kids to good colleges thereby investing for a good future. Banks stand for wisdom in life choices. It stands for accumulating wealth. Wealth in old English is closely related to health or well being. Another relative of my family started a bank in his hometown and that bank grew so much that it had branches all over the state I am from and also outside India. It provides jobs to thousands of people. The bank may have instilled the savings habit in the community. Incidentally the word savings which is a banking term is also a term that means something else. If you save someone or something, you help them to avoid harm or to escape from a dangerous or unpleasant situation. Save money though means accumulate wealth by not using money for unproductive purposes. Or not wasting money. If you have a goal of saving money you will not indulge in unproductive activities and you will lead a life with more direction. As opposed to aimless living. So may be banks stand for a community's quest to stand for a life with direction and aim as opposed to direction less and aimless. In this world pretty much every productive activity requires money. Food clothing shelter the basic necessities of life require wealth. Banks are literally the machinary or the energy behind every aspect of life small or big. changes in bank interest rates can send ripples of consequences throughout the global economy affecting everything from prices of commodities to lifestyles to savings from the value of the dollar to the geo political tensions. Banking is certainly one of the arteries that affect the interconnected world e are living in. Wealth creation, wealth accumulation and wealth management etc requires wisdom and character. character that saves us from a life style that squanders everything. Such as gifts talents wealth health relationships etc. This is where banks come in. Savings account, checking account, accumulation of wealth, deposits, withdrawals are banking phrases. Savings account is a place in the bank where you can save money. You can make monthly fortnightly or weekly deposits of cash into your savings account and watch it accumulate. You can watch it grow with the accrual of simple interest and compound interest. Banking is about wealth. And wealth is about health.