To-day the deposits, like the withdrawals, although they can be effected at all the post offices, can only be so effected on presentation of the Savings Account-book, whether this is done by the holders themselves or by third parties in their names. The Annual Report of the Savings Bank on these operations gives the statistics of deposits effected by teachers on behalf of their pupils, by parents on behalf of their children, by masters on behalf of their workmen. Teachers, parents, workers, retain the account-books.
According to the proposed law depositors will be able to dispose of the free balance of their account by payment-cheques or clearing-cheques.
At present the holders of the account books cannot have recourse to the cheque, nor transfer any sum from their account to that of another on a simple demand addressed to the Savings Bank. Every transfer resolves itself into an act of cession which must be signified to the Bank by a judicial act or notified by a letter bearing the legalised signature of the ceder. The carrying out of these extra judicial formalities is evidently incompatible with what is required in a perfect organ of circulation.
The end in view is in fact to place at the disposition of the greatest number of depositors a permanent intermediary which will enable them to economise time to the utmost, to reduce risk and expense and to save money.
The postal administration by the extraordinary development of its invaluable public service in collecting bills and taking receipts, the importance of which has tripled in the last fifteen years, and by the aid which it has given to the Savings Bank in virtue of the Act of May 30th 1879, in the collection of deposits and in payment of withdrawals, has realized one part of the operations which the projected institution includes.
But it is necessary to attain a still higher degree of organisation taking the Savings Bank itself as the foundation on which to rest.
The point aimed at is how to place at the disposal of its depositors a regular and continuous service of account-keeping both individual and collective in character, and to co-ordinate in a permanent manner all the operations which it embraces; the point aimed at is how to assure to every depositor the power of causing regular collections to be made by the mediation of the Savings Bank and the post offices, the amount being carried to his or her account; the point aimed at, is how to effect these payments by the same intermediaries without running the slightest risk, without the least of these operations escaping an inflexible account-keeping, constantly kept before the depositor's eyes, and without there being any need for the depositors themselves directly and personally to handle the funds.
The centralization of the accounts of all the adherents makes it possible for the Savings Bank to obtain clear and definite results and to eliminate by means of the clearing of accounts the intermediary of money in an ever increasing number of transactions, for this service is by its natural evolution, by the rapid increase of the number of the adherents destined to preponderate.
Assuredly, the instruments of credit and of liquidation, of clearing and balancing, which more and more reduce the use of money, have in Belgium taken an already great importance at the National Bank, in the private banks, and in the Unions de Credit:—the credit given and received having, in a quarter of a century attained two thousand millions of francs at the National Bank alone;—the extent of the movement being shown by the large figures of the current accounts upon which it operates, and during the last three years the National Bank has sought to connect by a sort of clearing the other credit institutions.
But who can hide the fact that we have yet much progress to make, or how far we are behind certain nations such as England. We may judge of it by the collected statistics given very lately by M. Des Essarts in the Annals of the Statistical Society of Paris. The point to aim at is to make the more perfect means of liquidation penetrate more thoroughly into new soil and of bringing them into closer connection with the social organism. This is precisely the project now laid before the Chamber, by which it is proposed for this end to have recourse to an institution like the Savings Bank, the deposits in which rise to more than 450 millions of francs and are distributed in more than 1 million 100,000 bankbooks, and which has seen these deposits increase, in five years, more than 100 millions; and to bring this institution to help to accelerate the general evolution of the community in the fruitful direction of the gradual economising of the monetary instrument and its final elimination.