Financials is sector 40 of the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), the industry taxonomy developed in 1999 by MSCI and Standard & Poor's for classifying public companies by their principal business activity. Under GICS, sector 40 is organized into three industry groups: Banks, covering diversified and regional banks; Financial Services, covering diversified financial services, multi-sector holdings, specialized finance, mortgage finance, transaction and payment processing, consumer finance, asset management and custody banks, investment banking and brokerage, diversified capital markets, financial exchanges and data, and mortgage real estate investment trusts; and Insurance, covering insurance brokers, life and health insurance, multi-line insurance, property and casualty insurance, and reinsurance. A company, product, or service is classified into this sector when its principal business activity falls within one of these three industry groups.