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“Universal Banking” theoretically means providing under one roof all banking products and services to various types of customers.
In practice, a universal bank offers a large variety of (if not all) products & services including: a liability products (say: savings, current and term deposits), asset products (say: short term and long term loans, cash credit and overdrafts, bank guarantees, acceptances, letters of credit), insurance products (say: own and third party life and non life insurance indemnities), investment banking (say: merchant banking, advisory, treasury products) and private banking (say portfolio management/ advisory services).
“Universal Banking” is thus opposite to narrow or niche banking where a bank engages itself into only one or few of the above activities.
Universal banking and commercial banking are two distinct terms. Commercial banking is a term loosely used for indicating profit-oriented activities (as against say developmental banking) or indicating business related banking (as against personal banking).
Large multinational banks like Citibank and Indian banks like ICICI are examples of universal banking offering a wide spectrum of products and services to a various types of customers.
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