GIS in Banking: Evaluation of Canadian Bank Mergers

E.H. MACDONALD: "GIS in Banking: Evaluation of Canadian Bank Mergers" .Recent merger proposals among major Canadian banks have required that the government, for the first time, review mergers of such size, complexity, uniqueness, and impact on society. The Canadian government's Competition Bureau has recently developed a standard process for reviewing bank mergers to help ensure that healthy competition is maintained across all markets, the results of which have a major impact on the success of the mergers. Defining geographic markets and calculating market share represent important components of this process, bringing to the forefront an application for geographic information systems (GIS) which is not widely recognized. Today, banks use GIS for many applications, such as site selection, evaluation of closures, targeted marketing campaigns, performance measurement, market research, navigating customers to their branch locations, and enhanced reporting. But the issue of merger evaluation is one less frequently documented in a GIS context. In this paper, it will demonstrated how GIS can play a key role both in helping government establish such a process for reviewing mergers, and in helping merger candidates such as banks wishing to prepare for such a review. Methods for generating geographic boundaries, and "spatial interaction models" used for estimating market share, represent the key areas of focus. E.H. MACDONALD: [much less than] GIS in Banking: Evaluation of Canadian Bank Mergers [much greater than] [Les SIG clans le secteur bancaire: L'evaluation des fusions de banques canadiennes]. Les projets recents de fusions touchant des banques canadiennes ont necessite que le gouvernement, pour la premiere fois, passe en revue ces fusions qui ont une envergure, une complexite, une specificite et des impacts sur la societe pas connus clans le passe. Le Bureau de competition du gouvernement du Canada a recemment elabore un processus standard pour examiner les fusions de banques afin d'assurer qu'un niveau de concurrence sain est maintenu a travers tous les marches et dont les resultats auront un impact majeur sur la reussite des fusions. La definition des marches geographiques et le calcul de la part du marche representent des composantes importantes de ce processus, et qui mettent l'accent sur une application pour les Systemes geographiques d'information (SIG) qui n'est pas tres bien reconnu. Aujourd'hui, les b anques utilisent les SIG dans de nombreuses applications, telles que le choix des sites, l'evaluation des fermetures, l'elaboration de campagnes de marketing ciblees, la mesure de la performance, la recherche en marketing, le dispatching des clients vers leurs succursales, et pour presenter des comptes-rendu ameliores. Mais la question de l'evaluation des fusions en utilisant les outils SIG en est une qui est beaucoup moms bien documentee. Dans cet article, l'on demontrera comment les SIG peuvent jouer tin role cle aussi bien pour aider le gouvernement etablir un tel processus pour examiner les projets de fusions que pour aider les candidats pour de telles fusions tels les banques qui veulent se preparer pour tin tel examen. Les methodes pour creer des limites geographiques, et les modeles d'interaction spatiale utilises pour evaluer les parts de marche, representent les principaux domaines d'interet de la discussion. Introduction Banks in Canada use geographic information systems (GIS) technology for a wide range of applications. These include, but are not limited to, selecting new branch sites, identifying risks associated with closing a branch, executing targeted marketing campaigns, navigating customers toward their locations, gaining better insights into markets served and expected financial performance given those markets, and adding clarity and impact to reporting through maps. But one such area in which GIS is applied, namely the evaluation of bank mergers, is of particular interest not only to regional scientists but the public in general. …