An accepting house is a primarily British institution which specializes in the acceptance and guarantee of bills of exchange thereby facilitating the lending of money. They now have taken on other functions as the use of bills

Bills

The Bills were a youth subculture that thrived in Léopoldville in the late 1950s, basing much of their image and outlook on the cowboys of American Western movies...

 has declined, returning to their original wider function of merchant banking. The 'Accepting Houses' in the City of London

City of London

The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...

 have representation in Westminster by the Accepting Houses Committee

Committee

A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"...

 which ensures policy coordination between them, the treasury and the Bank of England

Bank of England

The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world...

. Members of the committee have access to discounted price of bills bought by the Bank of England, although this right has now been extended to other banks in the UK and abroad. The term accepting house is now more of an indication of status rather than function.

Examples of UK accepting houses are Hambros Bank

Hambros Bank

Hambros Bank was a British bank based in London. The Hambros bank was a specialist in Anglo-Scandinavian business with expertise in trade finance and investment banking, and was the sole banker to the Scandinavian kingdoms for many years...

, Hill Samuel

Hill Samuel

Hill Samuel is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lloyds TSB's Offshore Private Banking unit. It was formerly a leading British merchant bank and financial services firm before the takeover by TSB Group Plc. in 1987, which itself merged with Lloyds Bank to become Lloyds TSB in 1995.-History:In 1832,...

, Morgan Grenfell, Rothschild

N M Rothschild & Sons

N M Rothschild & Sons is a private investment banking company, belonging to the Rothschild family...

, J. Henry Schroder Wagg, and S.G. Warburg.