SUNTRUST, RIVAL WILL MERGE; ATLANTA LOSES HEADQUARTERS

What deal means for customers

Mergers that create bigger banks tend to lead to some changes consumers won’t like: branch closings, longer wait times and potentially less competitive rates. But customers also are likely to get some benefits, from more robust digital banking options to new specialized kinds of lending.

Switching banks

Bank mergers often shake customers out of their inertia in search of a better deal, something Atlanta’s SunTrust and Winston-Salem’s BB&T have to consider after their mega-combination.

Change comes with its perils. More than one in four bank customers who have been through a recent merger say they have switched banks in the past year, said Paul McAdam, a senior director for J.D. Power. Only 3 percent of people made such a jump if they hadn’t been through a merger.

After bank combinations, consumer complaints tend to rise, covering everything from branch closings to longer wait times, he said.

If the SunTrust/BB&T deal goes through, the combined

bank will take on a not-yetannounced new name and be based in Charlotte. The result: None of the banks with the five biggest metro Atlanta footholds — and a combined 70 percent of deposits — will be based locally.

SunTrust is the biggest player in its hometown, with more than a fourth of the market’s total deposits, according to federal data.

The next biggest Georgia-based bank? Synovus, with less than 3 percent of the deposits in metro Atlanta. And its headquarters is in Columbus.

Losing SunTrust’s headquarters isn’t likely to make a difference in whether Atlanta businesses or homeowners can get basic loans, industry watchers say. The combined bank isn’t going to retreat from such a huge market.