Gringotts Wizarding Bank

My days passed comfortably exercising and studying. This had lot to do with the fact that I had access to money from my parents through Sherry. If I did not have that I would have had to do part time jobs to make some to meet my needs. Due to my daily full schedule, to meet my energy needs I needed to eat more food which was not available in the Orphanage. I was lucky to have Sherry provide me more food for me after meal time in my room. This made sure that I did not become ill due to over work.

I would spend some days at my house to relax saying to matron that I was invited to my friend's house and on those days me and Sherry would spend quality time together talking about my parents and other things. Some days we both will spend our days outside having a picnic with her being disguised as my mother. I introduced her to various muggle attractions like cinema and I liked watching old movies (old for me) with her. I treated her as truly part of my family and she too liked spending time with me.

I also found time to read up on Gringotts and the services they provide. It was the only bank in the world and they monopolised the industry. I sent Sherry to go to Gringotts and get me their booklet in which they had explained in detail about all their services. She popped and bought back a small book worth 1 Galleon. It was costly but the booklet was larger than I expected. it looked like a small book. I learned a lot about the bank from the book.

Gringotts had various branches in the world but they were not linked. Each branch was controlled by a Goblin clan. So I could not access my vault in France from England branch of Gringotts. If I had to close the vault in France and transfer the contents to my England vault, I had to go to France empty the vault myself and take the contents and then store it in my England vault. They will not do it for me. They did not even have files on their clients vaults in different branches in various countries. So the goblins in England had no information on my mother's vault in France which was good in a way as it made sure that the British ministry also did not know about this vault. I could keep the vault as a backup.

Gringotts was a place where people store their money and important items. There was no interest provided for the money stored in the bank as given in conventional banks as they did not use our money for providing loans or investments. So instead we had to pay them yearly a fixed amount of money for the security they provided for the vaults. Depending upon the amount of security we needed, the price was different. The bank was like a safety deposit box provider. We could close the vault anytime while giving a fee for closure and take everything with us. The goblins kept a measure of the money and items in the vault and wealthy customers were provided with account managers who helped their clients to buy and sell various properties and businesses.

My vaults were now frozen and it could not be accessed by anyone before I activated them with my blood. The problem was after I activated them, my magical guardian can gain access to all my vaults except the family vaults. The family vaults of big families are the ones with best protections including a blood ward. They also had guidelines for access and only the person having the blood of the family can access it. Even then only the person with the Lord ring can have full access of the vault. Others were limited on what they could take from the vault and even had a limit on amount of money they could take per month and per year. Large withdrawals needed the permission of the Head of the family.

The big families also had another feature. When a member reaches the age of 11, a trust vault is opened for him/her automatically which contains more than enough money for them to spend in a year and is refilled every year on the birthday of the member till he reaches maturity.

I had to find a way to keep the hands of Dumbledore out of my other vaults which I knew I had since Sherry told me that my parents had their separate vaults in Gringotts. I already have many ideas but I had to talk to my account manager to confirm my options.

Gringotts also provided a platform to submit Last Wills and they will execute it on the death of the person. It was not done by everyone. Only few families did this. Most just submitted their wills in the Ministry of Magic.

Gringotts also did not invest our money. The share system which is being used in the modern mundane world had not made its way into the magical community yet. Every business was controlled by a single person. Since there were no large corporations in the wizarding world, the share system was not needed. The goblins did provide loans but at very high rates. Taking loans from goblins was discouraged and people only took the loans if it was their only chance. They also had a gambling business in the side which was very famous and attracted a lot of people.

Gringotts did perform the heritage tests like in the fictions but the unclaimed vaults were split between the Goblins and the Ministry after 100 years of inactivity. So no long lost vaults can be found making Harry richest person in the world like in some fan fictions. The heritage test costs 200G which was high to discourage people to try them as people finding their vaults was money lost for goblins and the ministry.

They also had a Business of warding and curse-breaking which was quite popular. Goblins are said to be the best warders and curse breakers in the wizarding world. Their curse breaking business was more concentrated in Egypt due to the various magical tombs that were found there which had a lot of treasures.

Goblins were also famous for their craftsmanship and the weapons and jewellery made by them was famous throughout the world. The only problem was that they treated it like they were loaning the things they made and expected it to be returned when the owner died.