Филадельфийское Сберегательное Фондное Общество: История Первого Американского Сберегательного Банка.

The Philadelphia Savings Fund Society (PSFS), originally called the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, was a savings bank headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. PSFS was founded in December 1816, the first savings bank to organize and do business in the United States. The bank would develop as one of the largest savings banks in the United States and became a Philadelphia institution. Generations of Philadelphians first opened accounts as children and became lifelong depositors. The bank was organized by a group of men led by Condy Raguet, who had read about the concept of savings banks becoming popular in Great Britain. The bank quickly began to expand by adding services and branches, and moving into larger headquarters buildings. By the late 1910s, PSFS had the most depositors of any savings bank in the United States; it was second to the Emigrant Savings Bank in the amount of money deposited. PSFS began programs in the 1920s that encouraged children to put money into savings accounts instead of spending it on treats and school programs, allowing children to open accounts with PSFS. In the 1970s, changes in the personal finance industry led to smaller banks struggling to stay open. A government solution had such banks merge with healthier ones and in 1982, the Western Savings Fund Society was merged with PSFS. The merger deal and changes in regulations allowed PSFS to expand into new business ventures. PSFS quickly began expanding into other fields such as corporate finance, mutual funds, and real estate development. In 1984 PSFS began doing business under the name Meritor Financial Group to emphasize its expansion into financial services. The new business venture led to the company losing millions of dollars; it was forced to sell off many of its subsidiaries and PSFS bank branches. Despite the effort, Meritor continued to lose money. On December 11, 1992, federal regulators seized the 176 year old bank and placed it into the receivership of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC then sold its remaining assets to Mellon Financial for US$335 million. Mellon renamed the former PSFS branches Mellon PSFS, a name which lasted the end of 2001, when the branches were acquired by Citizens Financial Group.

Founded in 1816, the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society was the first savings bank to organize and do business in the United States. Savings banks had existed in Europe for years and in the early 1810s had grown rapidly through Great Britain. This growth became the topic of numerous journals and pamphlets, some of which were brought to the attention of Philadelphia businessman Condy Raguet in late November 1816. Interested in the idea, Raguet approached associates, Richard Peters, Clement C. Biddle and Thomas Hale on creating a similar institution in Philadelphia. A meeting was held on November 25 to discuss the plan. A total of twelve men agreed to work together to form the bank. Along with Raguet, Peters, Biddle, and Hale, the other men, called associate founders, were Charles N. Bancker, Andrew Bayard, Samuel Breck, John McCrea, William Schlatter, John C. Stocker, John Strawbridge and Roberts Vaux. Over several meetings the group figured out the bank's structure and positions. Andrew Bayard was elected the first president of the bank during the third meeting on November 28. The bank was named the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society because Raguet felt the name "bank" was unpopular and calling it a society would make it easier to receive a charter from the state legislature. On December 4, 1816, the Articles of Association, which contain the earliest written use of the name Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, were adopted. The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) opened two days before on December 2 in the office of the Saving Fund Society's first Secretary and Treasurer, George Billington. The office was located on the west side of South Sixth Street, between Chestnut and Market Streets. Depositing five dollars, the first depositor was Curtis Roberts, Raguet's African American servant. On February 25, 1819, the Governor of Pennsylvania approved the Pennsylvania legislature's act of incorporating the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society.

PSFS grew slowly, but as early as August 1817 there were resolutions authorizing setting up branch offices outside of Philadelphia in Northern Liberties and Southwark. At first PSFS was open only on Mondays for receiving deposits and Thursdays for giving payments. While PSFS soon opened daily for business, deposits and payments were still only taken on those days. In 1835 PSFS expanded giving out deposits and payments on both Mondays and Thursdays, and in 1865 it was open for all business daily. In 1818 PSFS issued its first home mortgage to architect William Strickland for US$7,000. In 1865 PSFS again began looking for a new location and in 1866 a location was found on Seventh and Walnut Streets. Designed by architect Addison Hutton construction began in 1868 and the PSFS Headquarters building was opened for business on October 11, 1869. Forced to expand even more, additions were later made in 1885 86 by Hutton and in 1897–98, designed by Frank Furness.

By 1917 the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society had the largest number of depositors of any savings bank in the United States and was second only to the Emigrant Savings Bank in the amount of money deposited. In 1923 PSFS began the first in school banking program at William Penn School for Girls. The program helped several generations of Philadelphians open up accounts as children, leading many to become lifelong customers. Another way PSFS taught children to save money in savings banks was a program that produced pageants for playgrounds and settlement houses. The pageants included songs about thriftiness set to popular music, cheers, speeches that quoted historical figures' opinions on thriftiness, and a play. In the plays, costumed children warned the audience about spending money on treats, movies, and penny arcades instead of putting the money in a savings bank where it would grow. By the end of the 1920s PSFS was the third largest savings bank in the United States and in 1935 was ranked thirty fourth largest savings bank in the world. In 1932 PSFS built a new headquarters building on Market Street. The new PSFS Building was the first international style skyscraper built in the United States. The modern skyscraper was designed by George Howe and William Lescaze and is topped with the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society's initials in 27 feet (8 m) red neon letters. In 1948 PSFS was the second largest savings bank in the United States with deposits totaling US$594,460,363. In the 1960s PSFS, along with three other Philadelphia savings banks, established a US$20 million pool to finance mainly low and moderate income minority families.

The United States in the 1970s saw numerous changes to personal finance such as the advent of credit cards, money market funds and automated teller machines. These changes resulted in a crisis for traditional community banks. The crisis prompted the government to step in with a solution to force mergers between troubled banks and healthy banks such as PSFS. When the deal went into effect in 1990 Meritor turned off the PSFS on the PSFS Building saying it was inappropriate to use the sign. Turning off the sign provoked protest from the public, historians and architecture buffs and Meritor and Mellon Bank agreed to relight the sign. Despite the effort, conditions continued to deteriorate for Meritor and other banks around the United States. Not helping matters was a poor commercial real estate market that left Meritor with empty Philadelphia office buildings and half finished suburban strip shopping malls valued at fractions of their original cost. Acquiring the remainder of the PSFS branches from Meritor in 1992, Mellon continued to expand in the 1990s including the construction of combination Mellon PSFS and Acme Markets branches, the first of which opened in 1994. In 2001 Mellon PSFS had 350 branches and 650,000 customers in Pennsylvania, South New Jersey and Delaware. Mellon PSFS's parent company, Mellon Financial, was interested in abandoning its retail banking assets and focus on high income investments. On July 17 Mellon Financial announced it was selling its retail banking business, including Mellon PSFS, to Citizens Financial Group for US$2 billion. At the end of November 2001, all Mellon PSFS branches became branches of the newly formed Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania.

The money Mellon Bank paid went to the FDIC, leaving Meritor's stockholders with nothing. In 1993 Slattery, who had long opposed government interference in business, sued the FDIC, claiming regulators reneged on their 1982 promise to permit goodwill in the company's merger with Western Savings Fund Society. The lawsuit kept the stock for the now defunct company alive with speculators buying shares for as little as 5 cents with hopes of a government payout to settle the case. Most of the 55 million outstanding Meritor shares are believed to be owned by speculators or PSFS depositors who had bought shares when the company first went public. In Slattery (Meritor Savings) v. U. S., after losing before a three judge panel of the Federal Circuit, the government petitioned for a rehearing en banc. The court has agreed to review whether the trial court had the appropriate jurisdiction to hear the breach of contract dispute. The government is further arguing that the FDIC is Non Appropriated Fund Instrumentality (NAFI), an agency created by the executive branch that receives no funding, and will not receive any funding, from the government. The FDIC receives funding by charging banks fees to member banks. If the en banc court agrees and finds that appropriated funds may not be used to pay judgments against NAFI's, then any judgment in the Meritor Savings case will be produced by the banks regulated by the FDIC and not by Treasury dollars. In other words, the FDIC could be found to be in breach, but it would be entitled to recover the judgment by member banks. In order to find the FDIC a NAFI, the government is arguing that Congress has no obligation to honor its promises to back deposits with the full faith and credit of the United States.