Banking’s Multi-Trillion-Dollar Weak Spot Faces Reckoning (1)

The sleek London branches of Metro Bank Holdings Plc have little in common with the storefront of Banaras Mercantile Co-operative Bank near the Ganges River in northeast India or the specialty-finance operations of Milan’s BFF Bank SpA.

But those very different lenders, like Silicon Valley Bank before them, are all part of a shifting and, in some cases, worrying global trend for regional banks. Interest-rate shocks, regulatory burdens and a yawning tech gap are disrupting lenders that have served as a bedrock for regional economies for centuries, threatening to cut off consumers and businesses from their traditional funding routes. ...