> 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
I shared the whole quote, but the goal was to just highlight that the number of banks is fairly similar.
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.
How silly. Per million people the US has 14.1 banks, which is only slightly more than the EU's 11.5. I don't really know what's up with the UK and Canada, but there's probably some economic variable I'm not considering.
Can you imagine if the number of banks per country was constant?
The number of banks is not a good indicator of how much competition exists in a market. The elasticity of prices in that market is a better measure, but also has flaws. In general you need to look at how much margin a given industry is pulling in to determine how much leverage it has.
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.
These numbers have strong historical reasons. The US had unit banking leading to a gigantic explosion in banks and this number has been going down as bank merge since the end of unit banking in the 30s.
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.
Forgive me but this kind of comparison is hilarious, given Europe is smaller in area, has more population and way more different countries than the USA.
SeanLuke|2 years ago
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.
zmnd|2 years ago
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.
fluoridation|2 years ago
Can you imagine if the number of banks per country was constant?
zmnd|2 years ago
ABCLAW|2 years ago
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.
panick21_|2 years ago
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.
esalman|2 years ago