There were about 18,000 banks in this country back in 1986, 40 years ago. Today, there are just over 4,200. And over the past couple of years, the trend’s been picking up even more momentum.
One reason is higher interest rates: banks are making more money, and when banks make more money, they often decide to acquire other banks. Plus, the Trump administration’s bank regulators have pretty much given mergers and acquisitions the green light.
These kinds of deals can help banks cut costs, modernize their technology, and pull in more deposits. But they also have an impact on the banks’ customers.
Steve Chu, the owner of a sandwich chain in Baltimore called Ekiben, had been banking with a small, local financial institution for about five years. But last year, that bank was purchased by a bigger, regional one. Chu said in a lot of ways, things have improved.
“One of our gripes with the smaller bank was, like, the online platform’s terrible, the website’s horrible,” Chu said. “But now that they got purchased, the tech is better, the app is better, the website’s better.”
On the other hand, Chu said the new bank feels less personal. For instance, he said if he wanted to get a loan at his old bank, he could just pick up the phone and call one person.
“They could fast track us, and navigate us through the bank bureaucracy,” Chu said. “But now, what we’re finding out is we just run into that bureaucracy more and more, and it makes banking a lot less smooth.”
That loss of a personal relationship to a banker has real effects on small businesses. | 
