Hi All,
The Financial Services Industry likes to have its hands in the most lucrative of honey pots- Endowments (universities, religious organisations, charities), Sovereign Wealth Funds (national or state mega funds, often obtained via natural resources), Pension Funds (be it government or corporate) , High Net Worthers (The middle rich) and finally Family Offices (the wealth of the extreme rich). They were always on the look out for the next honey pot and in the religion of The Indulgers and their Divine Bank of Merit, they'd found it.
The Bank of Merit is the Galaxy's largest organised religion, cutting across thousands of species and cultures. Like most religions it has holy books, teachings and religious - quasi historical figures and interestingly a pantheistic set of gods and other divine to mythical creatures. It is their teaching on the after life that greatly interests Earth's financial services. In essence the Bank of Merit is the heavenly savings account of all the good things- merit- that people do in life. When people die, so this religion teaches, you are first judged for your various sins and punished accordingly, but as with the secular world, some sins carry the equivalent of the death penalty of your soul . After this phase of punishment, you are 'spiritually washed' for heaven and then enter the afterlife : it is your individual merits- what good you've done , how devout you've been and the confessions you've made- that have been credited to you at the Bank of Merit which determine how long this will take and your exact material status in heaven, believer or not.
Not to worry, for the representatives of the god's of the universe, The Indulgers of Merit, decreed that the divine had given to them permission to set up the Treasury of Merit, which has an unlimited credit facility from the Bank of Merit (which can in theory print as many merits as it wants and transmits these to the Treasury via the ability of the Indulgers authority to 'bind and loosen' Merits in the temporal world) and if you deposited cash or other goods to the Treasury, you'd be credited with Merits.
This system has evolved over the past 3,300 years to the point that the Merits have become an tradeable asset and forms an important Liquidity pool, given the religion's reach across the universe. Some nations use these Merits as currency reserves or Merchants for trading collateral & others as part of a FOREX punt. The Treasury of Merit still gives you Merits if you deposit cash or goods to them, in human terms they cost £100 each, but these are often then sold on into what's called the secondary market - i.e. Stock Exchanges, where they are traded like any other asset and depending on demand can trade at a discount (i.e. under £100) or at a premium (i.e. over £100) .
So to the Financial Services Industry of Earth, this was another lucrative, liquid and broad market in which to profit in so many ways . Firstly the religious institution itself, which if it were a company would be wealthiest in the universe - the enormous fees from being their interstellar Accountant, Lawyer, Deposit Banker, Insurance Underwriter, Insurance Broker, Investment Banker, Pension Fund Manager, Asset Manager, Consultancy Manager, Media and Marketing etc , etc! Then there's there devout themselves who could be sold Insurance, Investment Funds and even loans to increase their 'Merit Leverage' . Then there's the non-devout, who use these Merits in FOREX, Trade and speculation, which is red meat to a hedge fund or investment banker. To The Indulgers, they saw Earth's Sphere of influence as a lucrative market in which to save souls and even more importantly the fact Earth controlled the pathway to 2 other galaxies, full of even more trillions that could be converted. So in mutual deal, both sides agreed that the Indulgers would be free to go about their business and even Evangelise and in return the Indulgers agreed to 'open up' to Earth's financial services industry.
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