Thrift banks, however, face the unique situation of being confronted with a question of both scale and scope. If you choose to differentiate yourself from other banks via scale, this certainly raises the intriguing question of how a thrift bank competes alongside the bigger universal/commercial banks or the smaller rural/cooperative banks.
If you offer similar products and services as those of U/KBs, the conventional thinking is that they would have the advantage of scale and scope economies. Within the framework of allocating risk capital to various risk exposures, this difference in scale and scope would be particularly telling.