Page 2091

Overall, things were looking up, but funding for the Bank was still a concern. It would take time to process all of the new customers and begin earning revenue from them. Hector fully intended to reinvest everything back into the Bank itself in order to keep growing operations, but in the meantime, he wanted to do everything he could to secure more immediate funding as well.

Which was where the other Atreyan lords came in. Prior to the Bank's official opening, he had already completed all of the postponed Gala meetings, so now he was working on an entirely fresh batch of lordly meetings.

Some meetings, he pursued himself--at the recommendation of his newly-formed Board of Advisors, which currently included Amelia and everyone whom she had handpicked. Now that the Bank was officially operating and getting tons of free publicity on the news, their hope with this new round of meetings was to appeal to the other Atreyan lords as potential investors.

And it was still very early to be getting too optimistic, but the Board seemed to be in good spirits. The more reserve funding the Bank had at its disposal, the more new customers they could accept. As Hector understood it, according to state regulations, any new bank had to possess enough reserve funding to cover the potential loss of every single customer's assets--up to two hundred thousand troa each.

Therefore, taking on too many customers too quickly was tantamount to fraud--which would probably cause the Bank to collapse before it even got off the ground. These regulations would only begin to relax if the Bank continued to operate for several years with consistently proven "solvency"--meaning, never failing to repay its debts or meet its other financial obligations.

That was part of the reason why they were having to put so many applicants on a waiting list. So every time Hector was able to secure new investment from a fellow lord, that waiting list could have a huge chunk removed from it.