Banking in Scotland.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 117, 15 November 1893, Page 3

Banking in Scotland.

Probably in no ©ther country in the world (says The Forum) are banking facilities so extensive as they are in Scotland. In every town, large or small, there is a branch of one or more of the great city banks, and even every village with the least pretension to size can boast of ©no. While in England there is a bant to every 10,000 population, in Scotland there is one to about every 4000. The banks are not proud, and they accept at interest deposits of sums as small as L 6 and allow current accounts to be opened sometimes with trifling balances which in England, as a rule, would be looked at askance, and probably turned over to the savings banks. The depositors in Scotish banks who have not mere than LI 00 to their credit, on deposit receipt or on current account comprised about three^fourths of the whole . number. The result is that the aggregate banking deposits of a comparatively poor country with few sources of natural wealth, and with a population of little more than 4,000,000, exceed 1*93,000,000, And it may be observed that a sum equal to perhaps one-third or one-hnlf as much again has been placed on fixed deposit by Scotch depositors with the banks doing business in the colonies of the empire,