> The US is home to over 4,700 FDIC-insured banks. It’s not far off from the EU, which has 5,171, but stop and consider that the EU consists of 27 countries. The UK currently has 365 banks, and Canada has 83
The USA has one bank for every 70617 people.
The EU has one bank for every 86637 people.
Italy is rather much more concentrated, having seen a huge decrease in unique banks over the last decade. It has one bank for every 134624 people.
I agree that the number of people is a better characteristic in this context, however the number of countries is important. EU has many different cultures, languages, regulations, so they have to have more banks. But looking at data, despite these considerations, EU still has worse competition. So still not sure what exactly parent meant.
Can you imagine if the number of banks per country was constant?
On the bank metric: There are plenty of quasi non functional FDIC insured banks that are used as vehicles for reverse takeovers to allow a market entrant to avoid the hassle of obtaining their licenses.
Additionally given the substantially increased variability within different European markets we'd expect significantly different competitive dimensions between regional and international tier banks.
Canada on the other hand had branch banking, meaning a few insitution each covering the whole country. So Canada had very far fewer banks historically.
During the Great Depression many 1000$ of banks failed in the US and none in Canada.