There are historical reasons for the proliferation of the title- every city and town used to have their own bank or several. These were independent businesses, each one having a President and maybe a couple of Vice Presidents. When mergers and acquisitions happened and all these single branch banks got rolled up to mega corps they kept the nomenclature because that’s what people were used to- a manager at a bank branch was a Vice President because that’s what it always meant, but the title then got used for anyone at the same level.

I’ve also heard that at least at some point the title “vice president” carried some form of regulatory meaning and was the minimum level required for sign off on some pretty basic things, but I’m having trouble confirming that and it may be wrong.

The reason banks have so many Vice Presidents is that to bind a company to a contract, you need to be a corporate officer. A Vice President is a corporate officer but a director isn't. If you want to issue loans, etc, you practically need this authority. If a relatively low level employee in one part of the business is a VP, that creates pressure to make lower level people in other parts of the business VPs also. Some of this may be historical, but this as I understand it is why almost everyone at a bank is a Vice President.

I viewed this more as a quirk of American IB titles rather title inflation. The path has always been Analyst > Associate > VP, and you can make VP in under 5 years.

> what would qualify as such?

“Senior Engineer” with 4 years experience.

Just that the convention is different. It is just the third rung on the ladder in the finance world. You might manage a small team of junior staff.