Banking is expensive- not only on operational topics, but also on Risk Coverage. Too much capital required, little returns on capital tied down. So it’s becoming increasingly difficult for smaller CUs to grow - they are doom to stagnate or merge.

Concentration is somewhat inevitable, sadly.

BTW Simple was not a real bank per se, most of the back office and core IT services (which amount to 80pc of non-branches cost) was provided by BBVA Compass (meaning BBVA had already consolidated IT and Ops in the US 5 y ago, to reduce capital contraints.