银屋 (The SilverHouses)

The SilverHouses is a banking system established by the Jin empire, created to deal with the evolving and connected economic environment after the reunification. Founded in 62 of the Jin Era, the SilverHouses have expanded to nearly 200 different distribution points, spread out in the 37 provinces of the empire.
The SilverHouses serves as the only official print for imperial paper money, and work in very close coordination with the imperial mint to manage the flow of money inside the empire. The SilverHouses also offers lending services and serve as a safe place for the storage of money. Its vaults have come to contain a vast quantity of copper coinage, silver talons, and gold ingots.
The SilverHouses business rests on their guarantee, that a SilverHouses bill will always get you your money's worth, no matter at which SilverHouses you go to.

History

The SilverHouses did not start as it is today in a single reform, or at a single date. But, if a date of its founding must be given, then the year 62 of the Jin era is as good as any.
The motivation of founding the SilverHouse organization was initially to unite the printing of paper imperial debt. These pieces of paper were often used by officials to make large purchases without having to carry large amounts of silver or copper around and were redeemable at any provincial treasury. Such purchase also gave a slight extra, as a fee for the trip the merchant would have to take to a regional treasury.
However, by the year 50 of the Jin era, the usage of this imperial I Owe You (I.O.U) were getting widespread, as officials found it very convenient. At the same time, many merchants chose to not travel to the treasury to redeem their I.O.Us, and used them directly in exchanges, which allowed them to keep the little extra fee given as payment for the trip. This meant that I.O.U were crossing imperial provinces all the time, and the differences in how the I.O.U were written and widespread counterfeiting meant that treasuries became increasingly hesitant in accepting the bills.
This problem was solved by Emperor Chun of Jin, and Grand Chancellor Wan. The Chancellor saw the main issue as the difference between the bill. He judged that the lack of uniformity was what allowed counterfeiting to prosper. To counter this, he proposed to the emperor that a new organization should be founded, one specializing in printing standardized paper money and exchanging them for hard currency. This was approved by Emperor Chun in the year 61 of Jin and in the year 62, the SilverHouses was officially founded by imperial edict.
One can correctly remark that so far, it seems that the SilverHouses only handles the printing of paper money and the exchange of it. When, then, did the SilverHouses engage in lending and safeguarding?
These functions of the SilverHouses came in the centuries after, to answer to other rising issues that came with the operation of the SilverHouses. In the years following its founding, funding constantly haunted the functioning of the SilverHouses. The organization, at its base, has no way to generate money. The purchases of paper, ink, and various counterfeiting measures costed the infant bank heavily, and it also needed to employ a large number of workers. All of this was directly drawn from the imperial treasury, and while it was a relatively small drain, it became a greater and greater issue in the imperial court, where the conservative faction rightly argued that the SilverHouses were nothing but a drain on the imperial treasury.
At the same time, SilverHouses struggled to survive. The low funding from the empire meant that the bank struggled to even maintain an office at the seat of all 37 provinces. Under such financial pressure, the SilverHouse was desperate for income. In these trying times, the merchants and citizens of the empire provided the bank with an unexpected solution. At many local branches, merchants independently came to the SilverHouses, asking to store their hard currency in exchange for paper money, either because they wished to travel or they wanted to know that their money was safely guarded in a secure location. At the same time, merchants and artisans who lacked funds but had ambitious plans for trades or industry expansion came to the SilverHouses, to borrow some of the large quantity of hard currency they had in hand. In the beginning, the management refused to lend or store anything, as that was not permitted by the imperial edict of 62. However, as time got more desperate, and as the merchants and artisans began to offer money or interest, many of the local offices chose to exploit the fact that the edict of 62 did not explicitly forbid lending or saving, and began to offer such services at a slight fee.
While this alleviated the monetary needs of the SilverHouses, the situation was unacceptable to the conservative Grand Chancellor Yue, who saw in this an attempt of the SilverHouses to abuse imperial funding for its own profit. He, therefore, instituted a blanket ban on all saving and lending services and punished violators with plank beatings and fine. This proved to be ineffective or even counterproductive in the long run, as managements quit in desperation and local branches were forced to close down due to the lack of fund.
The failing of the SilverHouses, especially the closing of the branch serving the northern cities, finally reached the emperor, who soon realized the scale of the problem he was facing. He immediately removed Chancellor Yue for incompetence and appointed Gao Ling to the position of Chancellor and Qian Zheng Gao, the former highest magistrate of the SilverHouses, as Imperial Envoy to investigate the situation and report back with a possible solution.
Qian Zheng Gao was already aware of the situation, and a tour of the province only confirmed his beliefs that lending and saving were necessary for the survival of the SilverHouse institution. As such, When he finished his tour, He submitted an over 100,000 character report, detailing all of the situations and recommending the legalization of lending and saving, to the Emperor and Chancellor Gao. After an intense review and multiple discussions of the details with Qian Zheng Gao, the Emperor finally approved of all the recommended reforms. In the year 107 of the Jin era, a new imperial edict was issued, replacing the old one. The new edict, among other small reforms, legalized saving and lending by the SilverHouses.
This one reform turned the SilverHouses from a bottomless pit which only sucked on imperial resources, into a source of imperial revenue. While further, smaller, reforms have been made since then, the core of the SilverHouse institution was established by the edict of 107. The SilverHouse expanded slowly over the next centuries to encompass nearly 200 branch offices in the 37 provinces and becoming one of the most important imperial institution.

百年中行 (hundreds of years of service)

Founding Date

745

Type

Financial, Bank

Parent Organization

The Jin Empire

Location

安宁 (An Ning)

Related Ethnicities

• The Jin People