Is 76 too many banks?

I was at a Lacey Chamber of Commerce meeting recently when they introduced a new member – Golf Bank.  That’s right – – Golf Bank. 

That got me to wondering how many banks we have in Thurston County.  I asked a banker friend of mine, “how many banks do we have in Thurston County?”  He replied “too many.”

But do we.   I wanted to know.

Before I could count the number of banks, I had to determine what constituted a bank. I decided to go to the yellow pages and count the number of banks listed.  I decided if they called themselves a bank, then I was going to count them.   I also decided to count all credit unions listed in the yellow pages.

There are 28 different banks and credit unions in Thurston County with a total of 76 different branches.  

Here’s my list.  It’s not exactly alphabetical but it’s close.

Anchor Bank-2, BECU (BECU has several outlets but they aren’t staffed so I only count them as one.), Columbia Bank-2, Heritage Bank-5, Homestreet Bank, Olympia Federal-6, Frontier Bank, South Sound Bank-2, State Farm Bank-3 (never heard of them.), Sterling Savings-3, Thurston First Bank-2, Timberland Bank-5, US Bank-2, Venture Bank-6, Washington Business Bank-2, Washington Federal-2, Wells Fargo, West Coast Bank-5, Tumwater Credit Union, Twin Star Credit Union-6, America’s Credit Union, Evergreen Direct Credit Union (I don’t know what that is.), Harborstone Credit Union-2, Olympia Credit Union-2, Sound Credit Union, OBEE-3, WSECU-7 and the newest Golf Bank.

I have no idea how that stacks up with other parts of the state.  But, is it too many banks?  You make the decision.