Little banks swing (and miss) at the big guys
Almost 80 percent of respondents in a recent Harris poll blame big banks for the financial crisis. The poll was commissioned by smaller banks.
They’re using it to smack the big guys by running TV ads that say, ‘hey, we’re the good guys.’
But the commercials haven’t made a dent yet in big bank dominance.
“If you go back to 1994, the community banks and credit unions had about a 70 percent market share. Today, the community banks and credit unions have less than 30,” says Gabe Krajicek, CEO of BancVue, which supplies high-tech services to small banks.
Krajicek says consumers think they can only get the latest mobile banking apps from the big banks.
There’s another reason we stay with the megabanks, even if we hate them: convenience.
“If you have to drive five miles to use your ATM, most people don’t like that,” says Bill Black, an economist at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
Black says community banks are able to make a lot of small business loans, but only because the big banks won’t bother with them.
See the infographic below to see some more stats about local banking:
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story referenced Gabe Krajicek as CEO for Kasasa. He is the CEO of BancVue, which owns the product Kasasa. The text has been corrected.
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