Quick Answer: A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Banks play an important role in financial stability and the economy of a country, so most countries exercise a high degree of regulation over banks. Most countries have institutionalized a system known as fractional-reserve banking, under which banks hold liquid assets equal to only a portion of their current liabilities. In addition to other regulations intended to ensure liquidity, banks are generally subject to minimum capital requirements based on an international set of capital standards, the Basel Accords. Banking in its modern sense evolved in the fourteenth century in the prosperous cities of Renaissance Italy but, in many ways, functioned as a continuation of ideas and concepts of credit and lending that have their roots in the ancient world.