>Why should efficient lending decisions somehow be uniquely hard to make in a large corporation with many local branch offices? Once a bank gets big enough, I

>Why should efficient lending decisions somehow be uniquely hard to make in a large corporation with many local branch offices? Once a bank gets big enough, I think the main issue is risk. The long tail of tiny banks represents a certain customer type that is harder to model in an Excel model and is vetted through personal relationships. Consider one the "big" banks in that long talk - SVB. For a lot of startups getting banking services such ACH, or lending mortgages to founders backed by "paper gains" would be a nightmare for your classically trained big-four bank manager. Conversely, all the work thank bank manager would have to do in winning those deals, likely wouldn't get any benefit from the parent bank except for the bank charter and maybe a small bonus. It's better to be the CEO of a small bank with a highly differentiated order flow, then to fight your exec who lives 1000 miles away that won't let you lend to founder of DropBox because cloud storage isn't a dropdown in their excel spreadsheet.