Guide to Analysing Companies

Mutual savings bank
A group of financial institutions in the United States found
mostly on the east coast. A mutual savings bank (msb) is much
like a savings and loan association (s&l) in that its
prime purpose is the provision of a safe home for retail savings.
msbs differ from s&ls in that they are treated like banks by reg-
ulators and that they are owned by their depositors. msbs are
usually run by boards, independent of the owners, who act as
fiduciaries. These days, msbs often issue credit cards and
offer current accounts to their savers. Together, the msbs
and the s&ls constitute the so-called thrift institutions.
M
MUTUAL SAVINGS BANK
209
02 Essential Finance 10/11/06 2:22 PM Page 209

---

Nn
Name
A backer of the lloyd’s insurance market who can demon-
strate that he or she has a certain wealth which he or she is pre-
pared to pledge to the market. Names are gathered together in
syndicates and each syndicate is managed by an agent.
The syndicate uses the backing of its names to underwrite dif-
ferent insurance risks. The names’ profit (or loss) is based on
the net premium income of the syndicate. The attraction to
names is that they can use their capital twice: unencumbered
assets such as stocks and shares or property can be
pledged to produce a second income.
Since the introduction of corporate capital to Lloyd’s, the
number of names has diminished, as has the number prepared
to trade on the basis of unlimited liability. Today, Lloyd’s un-
derwrites increasingly specialist risks, both marine and non-
marine, and the names that support the market are as likely to
be shareholders of listed companies that manage a syndicate or
group of syndicates as they are to be members of Lloyd’s in
their own right. They are thus able to limit their risk in ways
they could not as individual names.