State Street is one of the world's largest custody banks, safekeeping, settling and administering securities on behalf of asset managers, pension funds and other large institutional investors rather than taking deposits from individual consumers. The company also owns State Street Global Advisors, one of the largest asset managers in the world and the creator of the original SPDR S&P 500 ETF, giving it a significant asset management business alongside its core custody operations. Custody banking is a scale business where being a trusted, reliable global provider matters more than any single competitive feature, since institutions want their assets held by a bank with infrastructure that operates seamlessly across many markets and currencies. State Street's revenue comes largely from fees tied to the value of assets under custody and management, so its results tend to move with overall financial market levels rather than with loan growth the way a traditional bank's would.