Definition of ‘Banker’

Services provided by today’s bankers are far from their traditional activities of merely receiving deposits, honouring cheques and granting loans. The modern day banker issue credit and charge cards, deals in diverse foreign exchange and money market transactions, telegraphic and electronic transfers, bills and trade finance facilities, share financing, custodian and trust businesses and provides a variety of other banking and investment services. Indeed, it is now quite difficult to define the word ‘banker’ or ‘bank’ to cover all their diverse and varied activities and functions.
Essentially, there are two reasons why one needs to know who a banker is. First, the nature of the relationship between bank and customer has certain characteristics which may, to some degree, distinguish it from other relationships. Secondly, a variety of statutes refer to banks, or to bankers, or to the business of banking.
No writer can coin a single all-embracing definition of this word. Bearing this in mind, we can now consider definitions of the word ‘bank’ given by or laid down by the following sources:

(i) common law;
(ii) text-books;
(iii) statutes; and
(iv) judicial interpretation.