Federal Savings and Loan Association

A federally chartered bank that specializes in taking deposits for checking and savings accounts, as well as making home mortgages. Savings and loan associations tend to be smaller than other banks and are more focused on the local communities in which they operate. It is sometimes (but not always) easier to obtain a loan from a savings and loan association because it may have better knowledge of the local market. They derive most of their funds from customer savings accounts, but they also generally have easy access to loans from the Federal Home Mortgage Banks. They are also known as thrifts. They are regulated by the Office of Thrift Supervision.

thrift

A financial institution that derives its funds primarily from consumer savings accounts. The term originally referred to those institutions offering mainly passbook savings accounts. But the industry evolved through financial deregulation to the point where these accounts often provide only a small source of funds for many thrifts. The term often refers to savings and loan associations, but can also mean credit unions and mutual savings banks.

Wall Street Words: An A to Z Guide to Investment Terms for Today's Investor by David L. Scott. Copyright © 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.

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References in periodicals archive

Thrift banks are a big source of funding support for small businesses, real estate development and consumer finance, with a loan portfolio equivalent to about 71 percent of industry assets.

Use fintech, thrift banks urged

CTB is composed of 47 thrift banks nationwide with more than 2,400 branches including the so-called 'branch-lites' or microbanking offices that bring financial access points even to underserved or unbanked populations.

Thrift banks gradually going digital

Assuming Benefit is granted a state bank charter and considering IberiaBank FSB of Little Rock's announced plan to merge into its Louisiana-chartered sister IberiaBank, the number of thrifts chartered in Arkansas is about to dwindle to four: First Federal Bank of Harrison, United Bank of Springdale, Priority Bank of Ozark and Corning Savings & Loan Association.

New benefit

"Business has almost doubled in the last year or so because of the economy," said Barbara Bryant, chairwoman of the Grafton Thrift Shop, which is run by the Evangelical Congregational Church.

Booming business; Local thrift shops thriving in down economy

Although the People's B&L was not the first minority-owned B&L in America (that honor goes to an association formed in 1865 in Kinston, North Carolina), its formation came during the first major involvement of blacks in the thrift movement.

Homeownership is colorblind: the role of African American savings and loans in home finance, 1880-1980

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) clarified that under the new safety law, "sellers of used children's products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits, phthalates standard or new toy standard."

Thrift shops exempted from lead rules

The OTS Third Quarter 2008 Thrift Industry Report said that thrift institutions set aside $7.9 billion in loan-loss provisions, prompted by a continuing downturn in the housing market that drove a further increase in troubled assets--mainly single family mortgages.

Continued housing market weakness costs thrifts $4 billion in 3Q

To help remedy the thrift industry's problems and restore the public's flagging confidence, Congress passed the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA, P.L.

The Resolution Trust Corporation: historical analysis

In this study we focus on the case of bank and thrift acquisitions of thrifts in the 1990s, a period of dramatic transition in regulatory regimes.

Regulatory regime changes and acquisition attributes: the case of commercial bank and thrift acquisitions of thrifts