Function of financial system

1. Pooling of Funds

In a financial system, the Savings of people are transferred from households to business organizations. With these production increases and better goods are manufactured, which increases the standard of living of people.

2. Capital Formation

Business require finance. These are made available through banks, households and different financial institutions. They mobilize savings which leads to Capital Formation.

3. Facilitates Payment

The financial system offers convenient modes of payment for goods and services. New methods of payments like credit cards, debit cards, cheques, etc. facilitates quick and easy transactions.

4. Provides Liquidity

In financial system, liquidity means the ability to convert into cash. The financial market provides the investors the opportunity to liquidate their investments, which are in instruments like shares, debentures, bonds, etc. Price is determined on the daily basis according to the operations of the market force of demand and supply.

5. Short and Long Term Needs

The financial market takes into account the various needs of different individuals and organizations. This facilitates optimum use of finances for productive purposes.

6. Risk Function

The financial markets provide protection against life, health and income risks. Risk Management is an essential component of a growing economy.

7. Better Decisions

Financial Markets provide information about the market and various financial assets. This helps the investors to compare different investment options and choose the best one. It helps in decision making in choosing portfolio allocations of their wealth.

8. Finances Government Needs

Government needs huge amount of money for the development of defense infrastructure. It also requires finance for social welfare activities, public health, education, etc. This is supplied to them by financial markets.

9. Economic Development

India is a mixed economy. The Government intervenes in the financial system to influence macro-economic variables like interest rate or inflation. Thus, credits can be made available to corporate at a cheaper rate. This leads to economic development of the nation.

Functions of Financial System:

The financial system helps production, capital accumulation, and growth by (i) encouraging savings, (ii) mobilising them, and (iii) allocating them among alternative uses and users. Each of these functions is important and the efficiency of a given financial system depends on how well it performs each of these functions.

(i) Encourage Savings:

Financial system promotes savings by providing a wide array of financial assets as stores of value aided by the services of financial markets and intermediaries of various kinds. For wealth holders, all this offers ample choice of portfolios with attractive combinations of income, safety and yield.

With financial progress and innovations in financial technology, the scope of portfolio choice has also improved. Therefore, it is widely held that the savings-income ratio is directly related to both financial assets and financial institutions. That is, financial progress generally insures larger savings out of the same level of real income.

As stores of value, financial assets command certain advantages over tangible assets (physical capital, inventories of goods, etc.) they are convenient to hold, or easily storable, more liquid, that is more easily encashable, more easily divisible, and less risky.

A very important property of financial assets is that they do not require regular management of the kind most tangible assets do. The financial assets have made possible the separation of ultimate ownership and management of tangible assets. The separation of savings from management has encouraged savings greatly.

Savings are done by households, businesses, and government. Following the official classification adopted by the Central Statistical Organization (CSO), Government of India, we reclassify savers into household sector, domestic private corporate sector, and the public sector.

The household sector is defined to comprise individuals, non-Government, non-corporate entities in agriculture, trade and industry, and non-profit making organisations like trusts and charitable and religious institutions.

The public sector comprises Central and state governments, departmental and non departmental undertakings, the RBI, etc. The domestic private corporate sector comprises non-government public and private limited companies (whether financial or non-financial) and corrective institutions.

Of these three sectors, the dominant saver is the household sector, followed by the domestic private corporate sector. The contribution of the public sector to total net domestic savings is relatively small.

(ii) Mobilisation of Savings:

Financial system is a highly efficient mechanism for mobilising savings. In a fully-monetised economy this is done automatically when, in the first instance, the public holds its savings in the form of money. However, this is not the only way of instantaneous mobilisation of savings.

Other financial methods used are deductions at source of the contributions to provident fund and other savings schemes. More generally, mobilisation of savings taken place when savers move into financial assets, whether currency, bank deposits, post office savings deposits, life insurance policies, bill, bonds, equity shares, etc.

(iii) Allocation of Funds:

Another important function of a financial system is to arrange smooth, efficient, and socially equitable allocation of credit. With modem financial development and new financial assets, institutions and markets have come to be organised, which are replaying an increasingly important role in the provision of credit.

In the allocative functions of financial institutions lies their main source of power. By granting easy and cheap credit to particular firms, they can shift outward the resource constraint of these firms and make them grow faster.

On the other hand, by denying adequate credit on reasonable terms to other firms, financial institutions can restrict the growth or even normal working of these other firms substantially. Thus, the power of credit can be used highly discriminately to favour some and to hinder others.

Structure of Indian Financial System:

Financial system operates through financial markets and institutions.

The Indian Financial system (financial markets) is broadly divided under two heads:

(i) Indian Money Market

(ii) Indian Capital Market

The Indian money market is the market in which short-term funds are borrowed and lent. The money market does not deal in cash, or money but in bills of exchange, grade bills and treasury bills and other instruments. The capital market in India on the other hand is the market for the medium term and long term funds.