Financial Intermediary

A financial intermediary is an entity that acts as the middleman between two parties in a financial transaction, such as a commercial bank, investment bank, mutual fund, or pension fund. Financial intermediaries offer a number of benefits to the average consumer, including safety, liquidity, and economies of scale involved in banking and asset management. Although in certain areas, such as investing, advances in technology threaten to eliminate the financial intermediary, disintermediation is much less of a threat in other areas of finance, including banking and insurance.