These large banking organizations can now be found in many local markets, competing for business with the community banks that call those markets home. Here in North Carolina, the number of large banks with a branch presence in the state has more than doubled over the past twenty years, from 18 to 39.
At the same time, technological advances have made information about households and small businesses more readily available, allowing some (typically large) institutions to substitute credit scoring for more costly traditional techniques in the underwriting of some types of consumer and small business loans. This development has allowed larger banks to compete more effectively with community banks in providing these types of loans.