Recently when I heard that SunTrust and BB&T merged, I casually wondered about the footprint of the combined bank. Although the number of branches is not necessarily an indicator of the health or performance of a bank, there are benefits to customers of having brick and mortar branches of commercial banks. A few of these include:
- Readily available ATMs to help in cash withdrawals
- Customers’ ability to transact large cash withdrawals
- More robust banking relationships as customers tend to more readily trust banks with branches they can walk into
- Human contact to answer money-related questions
Quite often, a data scientist’s job is to summarize and communicate information in a clear and concise manner. We’ve all heard the phrase, “a map is worth a thousand words”, and with good reason. Maps are easy to interpret, they are nice to look at and they give us context without having to use too many words. In that same spirit, below we present some maps highlighting the geographic coverage of SunTrust, BB&T and that of the combined entities. A visual approach seems to be a rather pleasing way to allow an audience to rapidly understand the raw location data.
Continue reading One Data Scientist’s Primitive Approach to Analyzing the SunTrust – BB&T Merger