Too Long; Didn't Read
The banking industry is becoming increasingly centralized, a trend that the 2008 financial crisis accelerated. One in four independent U.S. banks <a href="https://ilsr.org/vanishing-community-banks-national-crisis/">disappeared</a> between 2008 and 2015. Even larger banks are cutting down on their brick-and-mortar presence: 1,700 U.S. bank branches shut down <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/banks-double-down-on-branch-cutbacks-1517826601">between</a> June 2016 and June 2017.