Maybe for bank stockholders, but in the aftermath of a wave of mergers, banks are raising rates and finding new ways to charge their customers. You need to keep more money in a checking account to avoid monthly charges.
Mergers get some blame Mergers are partly to blame, say consumer advocates.
In the past seven years, the number of banks in the United States has fallen from 15,000 to about 9,200 as big banks swallowed their smaller regional competitors. The mergers cause frustrating changes. A consolidation usually means new account numbers, PIN numbers, customer service phone numbers and new paper checks. The operational upheaval ties up phone lines and queues at the bank, all of which makes for disgruntled folks at both ends. Banks tend to keep the fee scale which account holders were used to at their old bank for a while, then jack them up for uniformity among all their customers.