mutual savings bank
- noun
- Specialized
:
banco de ahorros mutuo
- A mutual savings bank typically offers higher interest rates on savings accounts than commercial banks.
Examples
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The mutual savings bank is managed by a board of trustees elected by the depositors.
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The total number of state banks includes state-chartered and mutual savings banks.
Academic text (1998) -
Many families rely on their local mutual savings bank for safe storage of their savings.
Synonyms
1
8.6
A bank owned by the people who keep money there and run by trustees
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun phrase is compositionally built from 'mutual' (held equally), 'savings' (deposited funds) and 'bank' (financial institution), so a learner who knows those words can infer it denotes a savings bank owned by its depositors. Although the full legal/organizational details (board of trustees, chartering) are specialized, the core sense is directly derivable and parallels similar constructions in many languages.
Etymology
The term mutual savings bank comes from the simple idea of people putting their savings together to run a bank for themselves. The word mutual means shared, so the people who put money in the bank also own it, and that is why it means a bank 'owned by its depositors'.