> If they were popular with their customers they wouldn't be small banks, they'd be big banks.
What? That’s not how businesses work. Businesses don’t grow indefinitely, they size themselves to fit an underserved niche. Pretty much every census region still has one or several local banks and one or several credit unions, all serving the needs of people and businesses underserved by larger banks. And they do very well. Too much growth would precisely undermine their edge in serving these customers, for exactly the reasons I outlined in my original comment.
> What? That’s not how businesses work. Businesses don’t grow indefinitely, they size themselves to fit an underserved niche.
You're posting on a forum for a startup accelerator. That's pretty good evidence against that.
Anyway, there is structural pressure against a credit union growing, but not a bank; it just wants to profit like everything else. Like I said, the US is unique in having small banks. Most countries don't.
I didn’t say “a century ago”, I said “for a century”
Local banks and credit unions still do it, competently enough to earn very high satisfaction ratings from their customers/members.
(And there are indeed still plenty of “housemaids and gas station attendants” so that was a weird aside anyway)