BY BRENDON MATTHEWS

Ask most people and my guess would be that they see banking as banking. For better or worse, banks get lumped (and take their lumps) together as a collective group. On the surface, there may not be many obvious differences (other than size) between the giant bank with branches in every state and the small, community bank with three branches in Northwest Ohio. Banking products vary slightly from bank to bank, but your basic banking services can be found at each and every institution.
From my humble community banker's perspective, the main difference lies in scope and mission. A 5,000 branch bank serves a much larger area than a community bank, must cater to the majority, and makes decisions for the company that typically stem from a bank's corporate headquarters in a metropolitan area somewhere. A decision made for the good of the company in this situation will probably not be tailored to benefit Bluffton or Pandora, Ohio, populations 3,944 and 1,184 respectively (from city-data.com as of July, 2008).

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