The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of perceived service quality provided by banks on young adults’ perceptions of general societal and context-specific inequality, and negative emotions. Four laboratory experiments are designed and conducted to test these relationships. Results show increased context-specific inequality perceptions and negative affects on receiving lower quality service. Societal income inequality perceptions influenced preferences and recommendation likelihood for credit unions through attitudes towards them. A key role of knowledge about credit unions was found—whereby individuals with greater awareness provided more favorable evaluations for credit unions. Information received from friends was also trusted more than through ads. Theoretically, this research draws connections between literatures on service quality, social inequality, and information processing. Results found here have practical implications for both the functioning of banks as well as that of credit unions.

This thesis delves into the insurance investigation industry and the use of investigations for automobile underwriting purposes. An evaluation is made based upon the methods and practices of the leading investigative firm, Retail Credit Company. By using Retail Credit's manuals, directives, and interviewing both management personnel and field men, it is established that the investigator is working under pressures of quotas and constraints that m 'e it virtually impossible to complete a valid report.Two major automobile insurance companies are interviewed to determine the usage of these reports and what effect they have on underwriting. The Fair Credit Reporting Act is examined to the extent that it affects the investigative industry and the insurers.

Kiekvieno banko viena iš pagrindinių veiklos sričių – paskolų išdavimas. Su kiekviena išduodama paskola bankas prisiima vieną svarbiausių savo veikloje rizikų – kredito riziką, kurios nuostoliai bankui gali būti labai dideli. To geriausias įrodymas – 2007 metais JAV ištikusi kredito rizikos krizė, nusidriekusi per visą pasaulį ir atnešusi milžiniškus nuostolius. Todėl kredito rizikos tikslus įvertinimas ir tinkamas valdymas yra ypatingai svarbus tiek komerciniams bankams, tiek bankus prižiūrinčioms institucijoms, kurios privalo užtikrinti stabilų finansinio sektoriaus vystymąsi. Tinkamų kredito rizikos vertinimo modelių naudojimas bankuose leidžia sumažinti kredito riziką, padidinti banko veiklos stabilumą ir patikimumą. Todėl yra aktualu išanalizuoti kredito rizikos vertinimo ir reitingavimo metodus, ir atlikus atitinkamas korekcijas pritaikyti juos Lietuvos įmonių kredito rizikai vertinti. Darbo objektas – kredito rizikos vertinimo ir kredito reitingų nustatymo modeliai. Mokslinė problema: nors kredito rizikos vertinimo ir kredito reitingų nustatymo modeliai ir metodai yra plačiai išanalizuoti ir taikomi praktikoje, tačiau visi jie yra labiau pritaikyti stambioms užsienio rinkoms, kurios reikšmingai skiriasi nuo Lietuvos rinkos, todėl egzistuoja modelio, pritaikyto konkrečiai Lietuvos rinkai, problema. Darbo tikslas – įmonių kredito rizikos vertinimo modelio, pritaikyto Lietuvos rinkai, suformulavimas. Darbą sudaro trys skyriai: teorinė, analitinė ir rezultatų. Teorinėje... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Issuing credits is one of the main bank’s activities. Each bank takes a credit risk by giving the credits. Credit risk is the most important risk of all and requires exceptional consideration, because potential losses caused by credit risk can be huge. If correct and accurate credit risk evaluation models are used to evaluate the credit risk, it helps to reduce the credit risk and increase the stability and reliability of the bank. That is why it is so important and topical to perform the analysis of the credit risk evaluation and credit ratings models and to make corrections for adoption these models for credit risk evaluation of Lithuanian companies. The object of this working paper – credit risk evaluation and assigning credit ratings models. The scientific problem: although credit risk evaluation and credit ratings methods and models are broadly analyzed and applied in practice, but these models are more designed for large foreign markets, which significantly differs from Lithuania’s market and because of that the problem of an adopted credit risk evaluation model for Lithuanian companies exists. The purpose of this working paper – to formulate the credit risk evaluation model adopted for Lithuanian companies. This working paper consists of three chapters: theoretical, analytical and results. In theoretical chapter risk, risk kinds, risk measurement models allowing to measure creditworthiness and assigning credit ratings models are analyzed. In analytical chapter the... [to full text]

Dramatic changes in medical science and a general improvement in living standards has led to significant reduction in the morality rate of certain age groups in South Africa. As a result the average age at which people are likely to die increased significantly in the 2oth century. The implications of this has not only to increase the number of people who survive to retirement age, but it has also seen larger numbers of people live for much longer periods in retirement. Opposite to the above, is the HIVIAids pandemic, which will increase the mortality rates of individuals at a younger age and undoubtedly affect pension plans and the costs thereof. The effect of all these changes have been the ultimate cost of providing a given pension benefit. At first the paper examines the trend in retirement saving away from Defined Benefit (DB) towards Define Contribution (DC) funds. It looks at the reasons why this shift has occurred in South Africa, and provided confirmation of the retirement savings plans away from DB structures and towards DC type of plans in South Africa. Secondly the paper briefly looks at the operation of DC plans in South Africa. The potential consequences of the shift are then reviewed in the context of roleplayers in the retirement savings decision and personal involvement in retirement planning process. Upon completion of the literature study, a model was developed in which data from DC funds were used to make projections regarding the sufficiency and adequacy of funding within DC funds. This study has proved that the shift from DB to DC funds had an enormous impact on provision for retirement. It was found that a significant part of the population will not be independent at retirement and therefore might potentially became a responsibility of the state. The paper suggests that the level of personal involvement in the retirement savings decision may be a critical factor in determining the propensity of an individual to save for retirement. As a result research is proposed to consider the importance of the three elements in the involvement of the individual in the retirement savings decision: the perceived ownership of retirement savings, the awareness of the need to save for retirement and the understanding of how to save for retirement. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

This thesis seeks to explain some of the factors influencing British colonial officials in mandate Palestine, in particular, British colonial officials‟ response to the 1929 Arab Revolt. The various groups in Palestine at the time of the Revolt agreed that it was a direct response to the increasing vulnerability of the Arab cultivator to loose the rights to the land on which he worked as a result of the particular combination of his indebtedness and the laissez-faire market in land supported by the British administration. Based on primary source research on memoranda and official reports from the British Colonial Office between the years of 1929 and 1934, this thesis seeks to examine the trajectory of British credit provision to the Arab population in Palestine in order to stop the tendency of Arab cultivators (fellaheen) to be caught in indebtedness leading to landlessness. The most influential official idea between 1929 and 1934 was one that supported the creation of credit co-operatives for the Arab population. However, credit co-operatives never became an effective means of dealing with the problem of indebtedness leading to landlessness amongst the Arab population in mandate Palestine. There were multiple difficulties associated with the creation of credit co-operatives for the Arabs in mandate Palestine. The most powerful obstacle to success in this colonial endeavour was the lack of consensus amongst officials on how to provide credit to Arab cultivators. There was little agreement on whether or not access to land should be secured for the cultivators prior to credit provision. In trying to demonstrate how much disagreement there was amongst officials about co-operatives and land rights, I am seeking to explain why co-operatives in Palestine failed. In the official discussions, it is clear that there were a significant number of officials who had a very detailed knowledge of the situation in Palestine. However, there was so much disagreement amongst officials that this understanding failed to translate into effective legislation that could deal with the land question and credit. / Graduate

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In recent years, financial simulations have gotten computationally intensive due to larger portfolio sizes, and an increased demand to perform real-time risk analysis. In this paper, we propose a hardware implementation that uses a recursive analytical method to price the Collateralized Debt Obligations. A novel convolution approach based on FIFOs for storage is implemented for the recursive convolution. It is also used to address one of the main drawbacks of the analytical approach. The FIFO-based convolution approach is compared against two different convolution approaches outperforming them with a much smaller memory usage. The CDO core designed with the FIFO-based convolution method is implemented and tested on a Virtex-5 FPGA and compared against a C implementation, running on a 2.8GHz Intel Processor, resulting in a 41-fold speed up. A brief comparison against a Monte Carlo based hardware implementation for structured instruments yields mixed results.

In recent years, financial simulations have gotten computationally intensive due to larger portfolio sizes, and an increased demand to perform real-time risk analysis. In this paper, we propose a hardware implementation that uses a recursive analytical method to price the Collateralized Debt Obligations. A novel convolution approach based on FIFOs for storage is implemented for the recursive convolution. It is also used to address one of the main drawbacks of the analytical approach. The FIFO-based convolution approach is compared against two different convolution approaches outperforming them with a much smaller memory usage. The CDO core designed with the FIFO-based convolution method is implemented and tested on a Virtex-5 FPGA and compared against a C implementation, running on a 2.8GHz Intel Processor, resulting in a 41-fold speed up. A brief comparison against a Monte Carlo based hardware implementation for structured instruments yields mixed results.

This research portfolio focuses on the impact of the risks and the successful risk management in agricultural cooperatives. As a consequence, the main purpose of the study is to set a guideline for managing risks in Thai agricultural cooperatives and develop a sound practice for risk management in the future targeted to increase the profitiability of the cooperatives. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2005.