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Bharatbook.com Commercial Banking in the US

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Industry Market Research Synopsis This Industry Market Research report provides a detailed analysis of the Commercial Banking in the US industry, including key growth trends, statistics, forecasts, the competitive environment including market shares and the key issues facing the industry.

Industry Definition This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in accepting demand and otherdeposits and making commercial, industrial, and consumer loans. Commercial banks and branches of foreign banks are included in this industry.

Report Contents The Key Statistics chapter provides the key indicators for the industry for at least the last three years. The statistics included are industry revenue, industry gross product, employment, establishments, exports, imports, domestic demand and total wages.

The Market Characteristics chapter covers the following: Market Size, Linkages, Demand Determinants, Domestic and International Markets, Basis of Competition and Life Cycle. The Market Size section gives the size of the domestic market as well as the size of the export market. The Linkages section lists the industry’s major supplier and major customer industries. The Demand Determinants section lists the key factors which are likely to cause demand to rise or fall. The Domestic and International Markets section defines the market for the products and services of the industry. This section provides the size of the domestic market and the proportion accounted for by imports and exports and trends in the levels of imports and exports. The Basis of Competition section outlines the key types of competition between firms within the industry as well as highlighting competition from substitute products in alternative industries. The Life Cycle section provides an analysis of which stage of development the industry is at.

The Segmentation chapter covers the following: Products and Service Segmentation, Major Market Segments, Industry Concentration and Geographic Spread. The Products and Service Segmentation section details the key products and/or services provided by this industry, highlighting the most important where possible to demonstrate which have a more significant influence over industry results as a whole. The Major Market Segments section details the key client industries and/or groups as well as giving an indication as to which of these are the most important to the industry. The Industry Concentration section provides an indicator of how much industry revenue is accounted for by the top four players. The Geographic Spread section provides a guide to the regional share of industry revenue/gross product.

For more information, please visit: http://www.bharatbook.com/detail.asp?id=63042

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Must Know Business Logic Vulnerabilities In Banking Applications

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Over the last few years, our On-Demand and Hybrid Penetration Testing platform has performed security testing of applications across various verticals and domains including Banking, e-commerce, Manufacturing, Enterprise Applications, Gaming and so on. On one side, SQL Injection, XSS and CSRF vulnerabilities are still the top classes of vulnerabilities found by our automated scanning system, on the other hand however, there are a lot of business logic vulnerabilities that are often found by our security experts powered by a comprehensive knowledge base.

A business logic vulnerability is defined as security weakness or bug in the functional or design aspect of the application. Because the security weakness or bug is in the function or design, it is often missed by all existing automated web application scanners.

In this blog we are sharing the top commonly found Business Logic Vulnerabilities in the Virtual Credit Creation (VCC) module of a Banking Application.

Consider the following scenario: A Banking Application provides web based functionality to users to pay Bills Online as well as to create and manage Virtual Credit Cards. Virtual Credit cards are used to shop online. A Virtual Credit Card creation use case involves the following steps: 1.User visits banking application. 2.User opts to create virtual credit card. 3.User fills up personal details, required amount, expiry date of VCC etc. 4.User chooses a payment gateway. 5.User fills up credit / debit card details. 6.Banking Application redirects user to a Payment Gateway. 7.Required amount + Service Charge are debited from user’s Debit / Credit card. 8.Payment Gateway redirects user to a Callback URL provided by the Banking Application. 9.Banking Application verifies the Payment Gateway confirmation. 10.Banking Application generates a CVV number. 11.Banking Application presents VCC details to the user. 12.Banking application performs SMS verification of the user.

A couple of security weaknesses that are found in the above scenario are as follows:

TAMPERING OF DATA COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PAYMENT GATEWAY AND BANKING APPLICATION: Weaknesses: The Banking application does not verify whether the required amount is successfully paid at the Payment Gateway Side, or what amount is being paid at the Payment Gateway Side. As a result, a virtual card can be recharged with higher amount while paying a lower amount to the bank by modifying amount when the request is sent from payment gateway to the bank.

Mitigation: There should be sufficient validations between the Banking application and the payment gateway. The callback URL should not be allowed to be directly controlled by an attacker.

NO VALIDATION ON BANKING APPLICATION’S CALLBACK URL Weakness: There is lack of validation on the Banking Application Side when the Payment Gateway redirects a user to the Banking Application’s callback URL. As a result, a virtual credit card can be created without paying any service charges, by sending the request directly to the callback URL of Payment Gateway.

Mitigation: There should be enough validations on the callback URL including whether the URL is redirected by the Payment Gateway or directly called by an attacker.

VIRTUAL CREDIT NUMBER IS PREDICTABLE Weakness: Generated Virtual Credit card numbers are predictable or follow certain patterns. As a result, an attacker can predict what virtual credit card numbers are being used by other legitimate users.

Mitigation: Virtual Credit Card numbers should be sufficiently random.

NO ANTI-AUTOMATION IN VIRTUAL CREDIT CARD DETAILS VERIFICATION Weakness: There is no anti-automation (e.g. CAPTCHA) while verifying the Virtual Credit Card details such as CVV number and expiry date. The Credit Card number is sufficiently long however, the CVV number is generally a 3 digit number and expiry date is also a 2 digit number. As a result, it is possible to bruteforce the CVV number and expiry date, and shop online using a stolen virtual credit card number.

Mitigation: There should be sufficient anti-automation e.g. CAPTCHA while verifying the CVV numbers along with the Credit Card Number.

NO ANTI-AUTOMATION IN CARD CREATION PROCESS Weakness: There is no anti-automation while creating a virtual credit card. An attacker can use automated scripts to exhaust credit card numbers. As a result, Credit Card Numbers can be exhausted and be therefore made unavailable to users leading to a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. It can also lead to other attacks including Credit Card Number pattern prediction.

Mitigation: There should be sufficient anti-automation e.g. CAPTCHA while creating virtual credit card numbers

Offshore Banking

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Offshore banking has always been associated with an organized crime and underground economy, via money laundering and tax evasion. However, in terms of legality, the offshore banking does not prevent the assets from being the subject to a personal income tax in interest. There is a lot of offshore banking companies that you will find today’s market and they are all offering services that are beneficial to you as a business owner. There are some persons who meet with the complex requirements. In most countries, the personal income tax makes no distinction between the interest earned in the local banks and those who are earning abroad.

Although some of the offshore banks have decided on not reporting income tax to other tax authorities, and they have no legal obligation in doing it because they are under the protection of the bank secrecy. This also does not make non-declaration of the income by tax-payer or evasion of tax on that legal income. All those who are outside the country can freely secure their money on the offshore bank without worrying of other legal matters. In 2001, there have been a lot of calls asking for regulation on the international finance, particularly concerning the offshore banks and tax havens.

An offshore bank is somewhat a bank that is located outside your country of the depositor’s residence this is typically in a place of low tax jurisdiction that provides legal and financial advantages. These advantages also include: strong privacy, no or low taxation, easy access on deposits and protection against the local financial, and political instability. Anyone is free to make their own offshore banking anywhere they want. Since this is legal, the depositors have no other obligations in their country to make their offshore banking successful. A lot of people including the business owners are considering the offshore banking because they feel more secure in this type of banking.

You can do offshore banking regardless of the location for as long as you understand their regulations. When it comes to privacy, you can have your very own privacy in offshore banking. The bank also understands the needs of their depositors that are why they made the regulation of keeping all their depositors personal information strictly in private. The bank has no right in giving your personal information to anyone. Before you make your offshore banking, you need to make sure that you first check if this bank is accredited and respected AA credit rated by the international bank. This is the only way you can ensure that your investment or assets are protected and secured.

If you want to protect your savings, you can always consider offshore banking. It is easy, just find an accredited offshore bank and make your deposit. It is very important that you also find a bank that has a low taxation, so you can save more of your savings. This is the reason why many people is now considering offshore banking because of the high taxation in their country. With offshore banking, you can guarantee that your savings is secured and safe.

Aligning Investment Banking Fees with Client Interests

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As a boutique investment bank, we expend a lot of effort providing high quality advice and service to our middle-market investment bank clients. We understand the need to align our investment banking services and fees with our clients’ interests, because ultimately, we act as our clients’ advocate. Completing transactions is difficult; we need to be working together. The following is a brief primer related to investment banking fees.

Retainer A credible middle market investment bank will charge a non-refundable retainer. There are two primary reasons for the retainer: (1) it covers the time and expense incurred in preparing the client to go to market and (2) it serves as a screening mechanism to ensure that the client is committed to the transaction. This retainer may be paid as a lump sum, over time or based on achievement of certain activities associated with the transaction process. This retainer should represent a minor portion of the overall fee. Sometimes retainers or portions of retainers are credited toward the success fee.

Success Fee The success fee, representing the majority of compensation, is tied to successful completion of a transaction and is structured as a percentage of the deal size. For capital raises, a fee percentage is applied to the amount of capital raised. The fee percentage increases as one moves from raising senior debt (perceived as less risky and ranges from 1%-2%) to junior debt (more risky) to equity (perceived as most risky and ranges from 5%-10%). Some fee arrangements include an “equity kicker” in the form of warrants. The size of the deal may also influence the fee percentage; the larger the deal the smaller the percentage. For merger and acquisition services, the fee percentage is applied to the overall size of the transaction. Although many business brokers refer to the Lehman formula, few mid-market investment banks use this structure. Instead, they may quote a straight fee percentage or a performance based progressive fee, which increases based on achieving a certain valuation target. The higher the companys valuation (the more dollars the seller puts in his pocket), the higher the investment bankers fee percentage. Progressive fee arrangements provide a strong incentive for the investment banker while aligning the parties’ interests in maximizing the value of the transaction to the client’s owners.

Final Comments. As with most things in life, keep the fee arrangement simple. Haggling over unique, low probability circumstances or creating complex fee structures generally backfires. Complex arrangements tend to cause uncertainty and can result in lack of motivation and focus from the investment banker, not what the client desires. You get what you pay for. Expect to pay a reasonable, market fee. Receiving an engagement letter containing a low fee (potentially with no retainer), indicates a low level of sophistication. Conversely, an engagement letter quoting an out-of-market high fee indicates someone wanting to take advantage of a client. These are not investment bankers you want handling your important deal.

About Wilcox | Swartzwelder & Co. Wilcox Swartzwelder and Co. based in Dallas, Texas, is a boutique investment bank providing merger and acquisition services and corporate finance advisory services to middle market companies in the energy, industrial and infrastructure sector. The Firm delivers a high level of personal service, in-depth industry knowledge, rigorous transaction execution and superior results. Principals have successfully completed almost 100 transactions with aggregate value in excess of $3.6 billion.

Mr. Jason Wilcox 433 E. Las Colinas Blvd. Waterway Tower, Suite 1200 Irving, TX 75039 972-831-1300 www.ws-ibank.com

Securities offered through Petro Growth Energy Advisors, LLC., member FINRA/SIPC.

Nine Trillion Gone From The Central Banking System And No Body Knows About Exactly Where The Dollar

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Revenue by itself is just an notion backed by self-assurance. People in an economy use income as a way to transact goods. Cash is the way that people use to purchase a coffe or cappuccino but it is the coffe or cappuccino what folks seriously want to buy. In this regard, cash by itself is useless and is just paper. It is what funds can get you what determines the value of money.

Before 1971 the dollar as a currency used to be to be coupled to gold. Hence, there was a provided quantity of dollars that the banking cartel System have been able to create per ounce of gold. Additional importantly, there was a limit as to how significantly funds could be printed out. The wall imposed discipline on the beaurocrats and the dollars supply. By getting backed by gold, there was a organic limit as to how much of a currency the banking cartel could inprint and how much the government could loan from the central banking system. Absent the gold limit, the central banking system is absolutely free to print as much income as they feel necessary and the government can borrow as considerably revenue as it needs from the central bank.

By now you must have an notion of exactly where the 9 trillion missing from the central bank have gone. Obtaining limitless power to print as substantially dollars as desired, the central banking system has gone and saved banks, private institutions and other private bodies with the excuse of saving and stabilizing the economy by preventing system wide threat. But the reality is farther from the truth. In reality, what happens just about every time an additional dollar is printed is that the value of existing dollars in the entire economy and in your individual pocket sheds value, giving rise to the appearance of rising gasoline rates, increasing meals and power costs and increasing dwelling rates.

The inspector general was questioned about what happened to the 9 trillion gone from central banking system vaults utilized to safe the Federal government. According to the video, she is in lead of maintaining an assessment on statement transactions. To add more, Bloomberg reports that there may well be off-balance sheet additions to the revenue general supply not reported by the banking cartel, which means that the banking cartel may possibly be printing revenue out of thin air and they are not reporting the expansion in the cash supply.

Congress does not have the right to check the Federal Reserve with the excuse that it would stop the bank from getting to be a self reliant unit and would avoid it from acting in the greatest interest of the public provided that Congress would get in the way. As a consequence, chances are no one will ever uncover about the nine trillion gone from Federal Reserve banks, where the funds went or who spent it. Like the massive bank often does, they will just write it off and the taxpayer will bear the cost by means of higher rates at the pump. Now you know Subsequent time you hear that the Federal Reserve is quantitaively easing the cash supply, you should really understand that they are printing revenue that have no backing and that your fundamental goods such as food, energy and clothing will be going up in price quickly.