Capability

Group your market. Find the handful of situations your market is actually in.

Most markets get divided by what the companies are: how big, what industry, which region. Those are the fields that happen to be available. They rarely explain why one company is ready to talk and another one isn’t.

What this settles.

Knowing the real groups in your market ends a set of arguments that otherwise run on taste.

How many versions of the story you need

One message aimed at everybody is weak, and a message per company doesn’t scale. The number of genuinely different situations in your market is a finding, not a preference, and it tells you how many versions are worth writing.

Which group is worth the effort

Every group comes back sized and scored, so you can see which ones are large, which ones are ready, and which ones are neither. Some of the biggest groups in a market turn out to be the ones least worth writing for.

What each group has a reason to care about

A group defined by what its companies are going through carries its own subject matter. You get the topics that group has a live reason to read about, which is a different thing from a list of people to send the same email to.

What it looks like.

A small number of groups, each one sized, each one defined by a rule you can read and check.

The groups come from the evidence

Every company in your market is read against the same standard, and the groups fall out of what those readings have in common. Nobody picks the groups first and sorts companies into them afterward.

Each group carries a stated rule

A group is a written definition with thresholds in it, not a label somebody liked. You can disagree with a definition, which is the point. A company either meets it or it doesn’t, and you can see which.

Companies that don’t fit stay visible

Where the evidence can’t place a company, it doesn’t get placed. Those companies are reported as their own line rather than being quietly swept into the nearest group to make the numbers look tidy.

This is not the split you already have. Industry code, employee band and region describe what a company is, and those facts sit still for years. These groups describe what a company is going through, which is the part that changes and the part that decides whether anyone picks up.

A group is only real if it behaves differently.

Any market can be cut into pieces. The question is whether the pieces mean anything once you’ve cut them.

A split that produces groups of the same size, with the same needs, on the same timetable, has told you nothing except that you own a spreadsheet. A real group is one where the companies inside it are dealing with something the companies outside it are not.

The test we apply

Before a grouping goes anywhere near a client, it has to separate the market on something other than the scores themselves. Grouping companies by their own fit score guarantees the groups look different and explains nothing about why.

Why size bands keep disappointing

In the market below, the distance in fit between the smallest companies and the largest is two points. It is a real difference and it is nowhere near enough to write against. Most markets have a field like this that everyone segments on out of habit.

Here is that market, grouped.

The same market, in four groups.

This is the real example running: every company read against one standard, then placed by what its own operating numbers are doing. The definitions below are the ones the research used, not summaries written afterward.

1,921 companies read 13 criteria 175 worth engaging read 18-21 September 2026

Stage 0

Absorbing work with people

Work arrived that the bank is clearing by adding people. The cost of running the place is rising faster than what it is running.

Companies
244
In a live event
81
Worth engaging
65
Mean fit
41
Mean timing
48
The rule

Either limb places a bank here. The efficiency ratio deteriorated by three points or more in the quarters following a merger or branch acquisition on the FDIC structure record. Or the efficiency ratio sits above roughly 70% or is worsening over three years, while assets per employee is flat or falling and headcount holds or grows.

What this group has a reason to care about
  • What it costs to run two sets of operations past the conversion date
  • Where the work went after the deal closed, and who ended up absorbing it
  • Whether more headcount is the only way to clear an integration backlog
  • How comparable banks brought an efficiency ratio back down after a deal
Stage 1

Holding steady

Neither losing ground nor gaining it. The largest group in the market by a wide margin, and the one with the least happening to it.

Companies
872
In a live event
84
Worth engaging
60
Mean fit
19
Mean timing
31
The rule

The residual stage. Any bank matching none of the others lands here. Typically the efficiency ratio sits in the 60 to 70% band and is broadly stable over three years, with assets per employee roughly flat.

What this group has a reason to care about
  • Why a stable efficiency ratio can still mean standing still
  • What separates a bank gaining leverage from one holding it
  • Where operating capacity goes when assets per employee does not move
  • What has to be true before an acquisition is survivable
Stage 2

Gaining operating leverage

The best-run operations in the market on their own numbers. Getting more done per person, year after year.

Companies
695
In a live event
41
Worth engaging
28
Mean fit
10
Mean timing
24
The rule

Assets per employee up materially over three years, and the efficiency ratio improving on both the three-year and the twelve-month horizon. Where the two horizons disagree in direction the bank is not clearly gaining leverage and falls to the residual stage instead.

What this group has a reason to care about
  • What is actually producing the leverage, and whether it is durable
  • Whether a gain on both horizons survives the next acquisition
  • What happens to a well-run operation the quarter after a deal closes
Stage 3

Absorbing acquisitions without a step change

They bought something and held the line. The largest institutions in the market by headcount, and the ones with the most practice at this.

Companies
93
In a live event
47
Worth engaging
20
Mean fit
30
Mean timing
40
The rule

A merger or branch acquisition on the FDIC structure record, and since then assets per employee has not fallen and the efficiency ratio has not deteriorated.

What this group has a reason to care about
  • Whether holding the line is the ceiling or the floor
  • Turning a clean absorption into leverage rather than parity
  • What made this one go well, and whether it repeats at the next size up

The topics are ours, read off each group’s own definition. Everything above them came out of the run.

These figures come from the run that finished on 21 September 2026. The market was read between 18 and 21 September, and it is read again every month, so they move.

What the column shows.

Read the fit figures down the four groups and they don’t climb. The best-run companies here, the ones getting more done per person every year, score lowest of all. The groups doing the worst on their own operating numbers score highest. Grouping a market properly tells you where you don’t belong as clearly as where you do, and a market can be worth less at the top of its own ladder than at the bottom.

See all four groups in full

Two that work with it.

Rank your market

Grouping tells you which situations exist and how big each one is. Ranking puts an order inside them, so you know which company in a group to start with.

See what it does

Publish research

Once you know what each group is going through, you know what each group would actually read. The groups are what turn a market into a publishing plan.

See what it does

Find the groups in your own market.

The market plan names the market we’d read for you and says how we’d build this on it, before any of the research exists.

Get your market plan See the groups in full