Bancography Offers Insight on Banking Branches and Telephone Surveys
- Roy Urrico
- May 7
- 4 min read
By Roy Urrico
Finopotamus aims to highlight white papers, surveys, blogs and reports that provide a glimpse as to what is taking place and/or impacting credit unions and other organizations in the financial services industry.
In April 2025, Bancography, the Birmingham, Ala.-based financial services consulting firm, released the spring version of its journal Bancology, which included sections on branch expansion and telephone marketing among other items.
“The article about branching activity carries implications for all tiers of the industry. For credit unions and community banks, the crowding in some of the largest metro areas may indicate pursuing secondary-sized markets instead and ceding the largest markets to banks with the capacity to build market-wide coverage; or alternately, remaining rigorously focused within a single corridor of a larger metropolitan market,” Bancography President and Co-Founder Steve Reider told Finopotamus.
Why the Largest Banks are Re-Embracing Branch Expansion
“Total branch counts across the U.S. have declined steadily over the past 15 years, to the point that there are now 17% fewer branches in the nation overall than in the peak year of 2010. Large banks have led the way in branch reductions, consolidating thousands of branches, often in the wake of mergers that left significant overlap across the networks of the acquiring and acquired institutions,” wrote Bancology.
However, over the past couple of years a countertrend for widespread branch expansion emerged and gained momentum. Now many of the nation’s largest banks have announced specific plans, according to the Bancography journal. Why the turnaround? Two reasons were offered:
Branch expansion never ceased; it abated. “Even institutions that were in aggregate reducing branch counts still continued to add branches incrementally, to address emerging-growth corridors or franchise gaps within certain geographic regions and/ or demographic segments.”
Net branch counts across the industry continue to decline, so the expansion initiatives in some markets are not offsetting contractions in other markets. “Still, given the rise of digital channels and the pace of branch closures of recent years, the expansion commitments are notable, and perhaps surprising.”
The Bancology journal also pointed to large regional and national banks, such as Chase, Bank of America, Fifth Third, PNC and Huntington, which have all announced significant branch expansion efforts in recent years, and several factors driving the expansion initiatives. For banks with nationwide aspirations, there are certain “got-to-be-there” markets, whether it is a top-20 metro or a top-50 metro imperative. The handful of banks striving for true nationwide presence realize that an institution cannot claim that presence without at least some presence in each of those top metros.
Another commonality in these branching initiatives involves scale. “These are not single line-of-business offerings, such as a loan production or wealth management outpost, to address a narrow slice of the market,” Bancology reported. Also noted is how the “the pursuit of the nation’s largest metros by the nation’s largest banks may just be getting started, and as more banks consider nationwide or multi-region presence, the trend will bring repercussions to all tiers of the industry.”
Where does that leave smaller financial institutions? The Bancology journal wrote: “For community banks and credit unions, the swell of larger banks entering major metros brings challenges rippling to the smaller tiers of the industry. Faced with additional entry from national and regional brands, smaller institutions in larger markets will face greater need to promote their true differentiating traits, and the benefits a smaller provider can offer.”
In terms of potential expansion plans, though, the heightened interest of regional and national banks in the largest metros may direct smaller institutions to instead pursue a smaller tier of markets. Even while still ardently defending existing positions in large metros.
Telephone Surveys: The Buggy Whip for Marketing Researchers
The "buggy whip" comparison refers to the inability of businesses to recognize shifting market circumstances, such as the waning of the horse-drawn carriage industry due to the growth of automobiles. The Bancology journal drew an analogy with telephone interviewing, which it claims has become a relic in the research community. “Customer complaints of intrusion, fraud or security concerns, along with decreasing participation and rising data collection costs, sealed its fate. “Marketing researchers knew email eventually would replace telephone interviewing; however, not with such velocity.”
Bancography’s customer service, satisfaction and loyalty tracking study initially utilized a four-minute telephone interview to measure brand loyalty and service quality. Telephone response rate or interview participation in 2019 hovered around 17%, with minimal customer complaints. This participation rate plunged to just 2% in 2023 and 1.4% in 2024. Simultaneously, it said, customer backlash soared in frequency and level of anger.
All Bancography clients converted their telephone tracking programs in 2025 to email, experiencing resounding success, according to the journal article. Response rates in first quarter averaged 11% with no significant complaints, due to the combination of comfort and privacy in survey participation and the convenience of being able to take the survey anytime. The journal piece indicated change in data collection mode altered the results significantly, so comparisons to past benchmarks or trends are not possible.
“Information is processed differently when questions are presented by an interviewer (human) versus self-administered like email, text and snail mail. An interviewer controls the survey delivery and is engaged with the respondent. This human connection typically results in the respondent being less forthcoming,” Bancology said. Bancography surmised respondents tend to offer positive and socially acceptable responses, especially regarding other humans (e.g., branch and contact center staff and specialty bankers/relationship managers). The privacy and control afforded by web surveys allows for more honesty and blunt feedback.
In addition to the customer service, satisfaction and loyalty tracking study, Bancography conducts other service quality studies measuring new-account openings, contact center inquiries, and new mortgages/home equity openings – all using email surveys.