Bancography, a financial services consulting firm, today announced new features and functionality have been added to Bancography Plan, a market analysis and branch planning software that empowers bankers to forecast profitability and evaluate the performance of new and existing branches. This version includes the latest competitive data from the FDIC and NCUA, as of June 2024.  

President of Bancography Steve Reider shared, “We have an unwavering commitment to our clients and future prospects to offer the most accurate and up-to-date demographic statistics, competitive data and product demand estimates. Bancography Plan was developed so that banks and credit unions can make the wisest decisions in their respective target markets, and updating our models with key FDIC and NCUA data enables our users to do that.” 

Bancography’s analysis of the data reveals a few key findings in the 12-month period, beginning June 30, 2023 and ending June 30, 2024: 

Although the financial services industry experienced another decline in branch counts, the pace of declines slowed, with banks and credit unions overall shedding a net 1,000 branches in that timeframe (versus a 1,500-branch decline in the June 30, 2023 reporting year).   

Notably, the industry saw 1,100 branches open, a similar pace as in each of the three prior years; however, the number of closures dropped from prior years, yielding the lesser overall decline and the smallest net decline since 2012.Total retail and small business deposits remained essentially unchanged, growing by 0.5%.  This growth followed a nearly 3% decline in the prior year as the deposit market started to normalize following the COVID-relief deposit surges of 2020 and 2021. With consumers and businesses having likely fully spent down excess COVID-related deposits, deposit growth may return to historic norms ‒ in the 3% per year range ‒ in the years ahead. 

In addition to the deposit updates, Bancography added more precise financial projection capabilities and the ability to retrieve business prospect lists to Bancography Plan.  

When examining potential new branch sites, users can now scale the financial projections to reflect an institution's target consumer segments, including Entry, Mass, Seniors, Affluent, and Upper Affluent.  As an example, if an institution does not offer in-house wealth management services, it could decrement the attainable target of the upper-affluent segment to 50% of the base market-share penetration level for other segments. Additionally, users may request business lists and pricing quotes for any trade area to support branch business-banking marketing and sales efforts, via a partnership with DataAxle, a leading provider of business lists and data.  DataAxle will provide selection parameters, such as firms within specific industries or sales tiers, and pricing for prospect lists with full contact information, including email addresses, for firms within the branch trade area. 

Reider added, “With more than two decades of experience, Bancography offers broad expertise with the challenges of branching decisions. Our software distills that expertise into a toolkit that can help any financial institution interpret and better understand their markets.”