What are financial services?

Financial services is the range of services provided by financial companies who deal with money management. These services include accounting, financial planning, tax management, financial analysis and investment services.  Many financial service providers compromise of groups of expertise each focuses on one of the service. Some services like accounting require to be qualified from registration bodies.

Financial services cover a broad range of services, for example some companies may offer loans for buying cars and at the same time they may provide life insurance.  Many car manufacturing companies provide such a service to promote their sells. Also banks may offer special services for share trading and provide free advice on many financial issues as part of their main services.

A financial service provider can help small business owners by professional advice. For example a financial analyser  assesses the risk of a new business plan with respect to many factors that may not be considered by a non-expert.

Governments in some countries have some rules and regulation for activities of financials service providers. For example in UK the The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is the regulator of the financial services industry. It monitor the activity of Financial services firms such as:

• banks and building societies;
  
• investment firms;
  
• credit unions;
  
• mortgage and other home finance providers and brokers;
  
• insurers and insurance brokers;
  
• stockbrokers, asset managers and financial advisers; and
  
• some issuers of electronic money.