In his first week at Webster Bank, a community bank, Todd Purcell told a colleague that the smaller budget worried him. Todd, now SVP and Head of Digital Strategy at TD Bank, had come to Webster from a career at large institutions. The colleague had made the same move, from a large bank to Webster. He told Todd they were on a similar journey, with the same aspirations, fewer zeros in the budget, and fewer people to do the work.
Todd joined us on Next Best Action, our podcast on how banks and credit unions adapt. He passed the lesson along to community institutions: “you have a few less zeros in your budget and a few less people to make it happen.” He also described what the smaller bank gave him. “We were able to make decisions more quickly, and that was a really unique moment for me, coming from large banks to Webster.”
Other guests describe the same pair of facts. Smaller institutions have fewer resources. They also have two advantages that an institution cannot purchase: closeness to the people they serve, and speed.
Where smaller institutions start
This is what small means in this market. The ten largest banks held 52.4% of the deposits at FDIC-insured banks in June 2026, according to Banksparency’s analysis of FDIC call report data. They held 52.0% in 2015. The other 4,228 banks that filed share the remaining 47.6%. Credit unions are insured by a different agency and sit outside these figures. Beside those ten banks, community banks and credit unions are small.
Lauren Kessler, director of marketing, analytics, and sales at BankFund Credit Union, accepts the budget gap. She has never worked at a large bank, and she says her view comes from friends who have. She says community institutions “are never going to compete from a budget standpoint, but we’re able to move a lot faster and pivot quicker.”
“When you’re smaller, the clarity of what you’re doing comes much more easily, because you’re closer to the member and you can see it.” – Kevin Miller, President and CEO, Travis Credit Union
Closeness
Scott Hurlbert, SVP of Digital Channels at Provident Bank, has spent 19 years building digital banking. He says some of the largest institutions “can’t effectively bring you one unified bundle of personal, commercial, wealth, and insurance together seamlessly.” A smaller institution can stay close to the person it serves, and Scott tells smaller institutions they “aren’t solving the exact same problems as a $2 trillion institution.”
Neville Billimoria, chief marketing officer at Mission Fed Credit Union in San Diego, describes a choice about where to be close. Mission Fed exclusively serves San Diego. “There are way bigger banks and other organizations, but they’re all over the place,” he says. Mission Fed keeps all of its giving local. He says members describe the result this way: “They know me, I know the people, they know my kids.”
Mission Fed has 330,000 members, and Neville expects closeness to hold at that size. His answer runs through employees. An institution that treats employees as people and gives them “that sense of belonging and connectivity and value” finds that the employees pass that care on to members.
Kevin Miller, president and CEO of Travis Credit Union, has held retail leadership roles at TCF Bank and Santander, and other roles at BMO Harris and Bank of America. He describes what closeness gives a smaller institution. “When you’re smaller, the clarity of what you’re doing comes much more easily, because you’re closer to the member and you can see it.”
Speed
Clarity lets people move from an idea to a decision faster. Kevin describes both paths. “At a big institution I would sit through seven committees and spend a year talking about something. Here we can go from ideation to execution in thirty days, ninety days, or a year, depending on the thing.”
Todd found the same at Webster. He credits the bank’s ability “to be more nimble, to acquire fintech solutions more quickly than a larger bank could.” He says decisions came faster there than at TD Bank, where he works today.
A smaller institution that buys technology as quickly as Todd describes can have our digital experience personalization platform running within a quarter.
Institutions need speed as AI changes the industry. Lauren says that in the age of AI, “that ability to pivot and adapt matters a lot, because AI means more disruptions coming, and faster.”
What it costs
Being smaller also brings limits, and the guests describe them. Todd says the smallness that attracted him at Webster “was also what scared me a little.” Kevin says his credit union’s youth banking capabilities “need work.” He is considering a partnership with a white-label fintech to raise them, with the product kept under the Travis brand. He says of both sizes, “Each has a real strength and a real weakness.”
Large institutions have strengths, and the guests say so. Kevin says, “there’s a place for everybody in the ecosystem.” Todd works at a large bank today and still uses what he learned at Webster.
The number of institutions has fallen. In June 2015, 581 banks held 90% of the deposits at FDIC-insured banks. In June 2026, 320 banks held that share. The number of FDIC-insured banks that filed fell from 6,348 to 4,238 over the same period. The NCUA counted 6,159 federally insured credit unions in June 2015 and 4,214 in June 2026. Both counts fell by about a third.
What the guests describe
A smaller institution sits close to the people it serves and to the people who do the work. It can often decide in weeks what a larger institution takes a year to decide. No institution can purchase either one with a larger budget. An institution that has both has a chance, and the people inside it decide whether the chance ends in a win. Todd’s advice shows how: “You can’t do it all, but find out what matters most and do that as well as you possibly can.”
Three questions to ask before the next decision
- Ask your teams what matters most to the strategy, and how their daily decisions help reach it. Scott asks leaders to find out whether their teams understand it. Todd adds that an institution cannot do everything, so name what it will leave out.
- Ask whether the answer would change the decision. Lauren asks her analysts whether the decision changes if a number reads 100 out of 100 or zero out of 100. If it does not, the team moves on.
- Compare what the institution says about itself with what the people it serves feel. Neville wants what an institution says in ads and on billboards to match the experience people have when they arrive. Kevin says a member can feel valued by the credit union and still meet an online experience that does not match that value.
