That's not necessarily possible. Many banks do not have physical locations, and many people do banking business while physically away from a bank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_bank

We're talking about recovery mechanisms, not day to day regular banking interactions. Ultimately, if there isn't a physical branch you can show up to easily, your access recovery time might be pretty inconvenient. This would be a good thing to consider when selecting a bank.

Online only banking is fairly popular for traditional banking services, and wildly popular when you consider money transmitters, lenders, and investment brokerages.

Whatever the problem you think they have with authentication resets -- much of the financial market seems to have solved the problem well enough without in-person resets to have successful mainstream businesses.

Yes, but remember, the original scenario was person leaving Canada, and trying to use their Canadian bank account from the US. There is nowhere to show up. But, if they could swallow SMS roaming costs temporarily, they could access to their account easily.

> There is nowhere to show up.

There's Canada. And yes, re-enabling a SIM and paying a handful of roaming SMS charges might easily be more convenient than traveling to Canada.