Assume every single branch is staffed by no fewer than 20 people. That gets you to ~20k employees to run all brick & mortar retail ops.
What the hell are the other 180k employees doing? That's still more than all of Google today.
It is strange and horrible that it is become like that, but that's where we are.
More sectors than one would think are primarily compliance businesses.
Given that in very recent times we got to experience what happens when people handling money completely ignore regulations, I'm quite happy banks are "compliance businesses".
Banks should be boring businesses focused on taking deposits, making loans and other variations of that sort of capital allocation. Whenever a bank talks about "new financial innovations!", run for the hills because it's invariably a way to separate customers from more of their money.
While there are probably many factors, you cant be that comparatively bad for a competitive and fungible service -- and expect no business consequences.
Theoretically, lets say you keep 5k buffer in your checking account. The amount goes up and down as you get paychecks, pay out your rent, credit card bills, etc. That average 5k balance at 5% interest gets you $250 annually, or about $21/mo in interest. You'll give away 30% of that to taxes, so the "opportunity cost" of your checking account is ~$14/mo.
A serious question for any busy professional (as many of us are here) -- is chasing after this $14/mo worth the cost of a substandard checking account and bank service? My experience is that good banking service pays for itsself.
I'll give examples:
- One inexplicable fee from a bad bank will wipe out your monthly monthly interest
- If you have to wait on hold for 1hr to fix it, you've already lost way more
- If you have to pay fees left and right for things like certified checks, again you have lost the interest
- If you have fraud on your account and spend >2hrs dealing with it because the bank is unwilling to help or sends you to some offshore call center, again you lose.
- Suddenly need a statement from a year ago? Some banks will charge for that. HSBC (last I used) neither returns your checks nor shows images of your checks, so you have no record of checks unless you keep them.
A great bank has all sorts of fringe benefits. Mine will even do notary service for free. Mine will give near spot FX rates on overseas ATM withdrawls.
For US customers I would wholeheartedly recommend Chase, no need to be penny-wise pound foolish.