New Game Settings of the Banking and Finance DLC
The Banking and Finance DLC carries a large array of settings, and experimenting with them is how you make each sandbox game a different challenge.
The Personal Savings Rate Modifier, for instance, can dramatically increase how much people deposit in banks and so lift bank profitability across the board. Whether banks in your game are hugely profitable financial powerhouses or a modest complement to your main business is your decision to make.
The settings are grouped into six pages.
Competitors
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Difficulty level for the DLC | The overall difficulty of operating banks and insurance companies. |
| Aggressiveness of AI banks and insurers | Higher values make AI banks lure customers away with higher deposit rates, and AI insurers price their products more competitively. |
| Number of AI companies focused on banking | How many start the game as banking specialists. |
| Number of AI companies focused on insurance | How many start the game as insurance specialists. |
| Tendency of AI to set up banks | How likely a diversifying AI company — one that may expand into any industry — is to open a bank. |
| Tendency of AI to set up insurance companies | The same, for insurance. |
Bank
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Feature: Bank | Whether banks can be set up in the game at all. |
| Savings rate modifier | Modifies the personal savings rate. A higher rate means more money deposited in banks, and more profitable banks generally. |
| Base loan interest rate | The base rate behind bonds and bank loans. A higher rate raises borrowing costs, which is harder on companies that expand on debt. |
| Initial net interest spread | The gap between the rate a bank pays depositors and the rate it charges borrowers. A wider spread is a wider profit margin. |
| Maximum loan-to-asset ratio | The absolute ceiling on what any bank — yours or an AI’s — can lend. A cautious bank may set a lower ratio of its own on the bank HQ interface, but not a higher one. |
| Corporate deposit cap | As a percentage of total bank deposits. Regulation requires that deposits are not concentrated in a few large depositors, so each one is capped. |
| Required bank capital ratio | The capital the central bank requires a bank to hold against unexpected losses — its equity capital as a ratio of total assets. |
| Economy’s impact on loan defaults | How hard a downturn hits the default rate. Set high, defaults soar in a recession and can trigger a liquidity crisis — which bites hardest on banks holding large books of high-risk, high-interest loans. This is the dial to turn if the risk/reward of banking is not where you want it. |
Realistic Loan Demand
Enabled, the demand for bank loans is limited rather than infinite. It tracks the total GDP of all cities, and the current Loan Demand indicator sits on the Loans page of your Bank HQ.
The problem it creates: with no new loan demand, cash sits idle in your bank earning nothing — while the bank still pays interest on existing deposits. Profitability suffers.
So enabling it also unlocks a remedy: Threshold for Stopping Accepting Corporate Deposits, on the Deposits from HQ page of the Bank HQ interface.
With it enabled, the bank stops taking new corporate deposits once its cash, as a percentage of total assets, passes the threshold you set.
Insurance
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Feature: Insurance | Whether insurance companies can be set up in the game at all. |
| Insurance premiums modifier | Above 100, it raises the revenue of every insurance company. |
| Insurance claims | The average claims insurers must pay. A lower claims ratio means a higher profit margin. |
Bond
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Feature: Bond | Enables corporate bond issuance and opens the bond market. |
| Percentage of player capital funded by bond | For experienced players who want a harder start: part of your corporation’s initial capital arrives as a bond issue, so you owe interest on it and must repay the principal at maturity. |
| Bond credit standard | Loose, Normal or Tight. A looser standard gives every corporation better credit ratings and cheaper bond interest. |
| Bond issue limit | A corporation can issue bonds up to a multiple of its capitalization, set here. Higher allows larger issues. |
Global Stock
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Feature: Global Stock Market | Whether the global stock market is available. |
| Initial stock price modifier | Global stock prices load from a database; this shifts them all. A lower value means lower starting prices — and more room for gains later. |
Others
Warehouse Floors
Choose Multiple to allow warehouses with more than one floor.
Realistic Money Supply
Available when both the Survival Mode of the City Economic Simulation DLC and the Banking and Finance DLC are enabled. Money supply is then simulated more realistically, and raising funds through an IPO, a share issue or a bond issue becomes harder for you and the AI companies alike.
More about Realistic Money Supply Return to Banking and Finance DLC Main Page