Lesson 3 of 8
Deposits: stable and cheap, but only for licensed institutions
A deposit is money the public places with an institution, to be repaid on demand or at an agreed date. This lesson explains why only licensed and supervised institutions may take deposits, what changes when a lender starts to, how bank liquidity rules measure how stable different kinds of deposits are, and what deposit insurance does.
Published 4 November 2026 · Listen to this lesson
In this lesson
- Why deposits are different
- From lending only to taking deposits
- Savings required as a condition of a loan
- How stable is a deposit?
- Deposit insurance
- Questions to ask about deposit funding