We only have a few banks in Canada and they are billion dollar a quarter behemoths with no real competition, much like our media companies. They have gala dinners with all the important political people so I don't think that is going to change anytime soon. There are credit unions as an alternative but there are trade offs to using them, for the average person it probably has more to do with the marketing reach of the big banks, to be honest.

The crazy thing is, they want to close branches but still want you to come in for high touch service so they can try to sell you stuff. Like I was trying to transfer money in from another bank and they wanted me to come in to discuss. They have two different agendas that conflict at the moment.