CHARITY BANKING: UTOPIA OR AN ALTERNATIVE TO GREEDY FINANCE?

This paper will examine so-called charity banking in terms of the idea, the current impact on the banking market and the social aspects for communities and depositors. The current state-of-art is presented and an attempt to assess whether “charity” & “social” are appropriate words to describe banking. The terms: social/charity banking, social money and social return are defined. Then there are examples of banking institutions engaged in a social/charity approach. In the last part authors triy to evaluate how much truth there is in the social/charity statements of such institutions.