Came across a nice little book a while back, Axtara - Banking and Finance. It's about a dragon who decides the best way to build a hoard is to set up a bank and let people just give their money to her for safekeeping. She actually does a good job of looking into what banks are for, though, and selects a recently-established town out on the fringes of civilization where there's a lot of potential for future growth and development, planning to issue loans to help businesses get started and increase the overall wealth of the region. And thus the value of her own hoard, both in terms of the raw money in the vault and the value of the mortgages she holds.

This reminded me of that.