Содержание и принципы социального банковского дела

Abstract

Conventional banking, focused on profit maximizing, shows its inefficiency. The urgent search for alternative models of banking is needed. One of them is a model of social banks. However, the framework of their business practice and principles remain poorly understood. This paper aims at determining the nature of social banking, its distinguishing features and the level of financial sustainability. Inductive and deductive methods of analysis and synthesis, systematic approach, comparison are used. Academic literature review covers the evolution of ideas about social banking. The paper contains the social bank’s definition as a special type of commercial bank aimed at maximizing its positive contribution to the development of society through the provision of mainly traditional banking services and based on the principles of sustainable development, transparency and cooperation. The empirical results confirm a high level of financial stability of social banks. The article states the hypothesis about the key role of shareholders’ and managers’ motivation to create a social bank. Further research requires the development of measurement tools to evaluate social banking.