Truist

Truist runs 1,931 branches on about $419 billion in deposits — a genuine regional network, concentrated in the Southeast, from a bank formed by one of the largest mergers in recent U.S. banking history. The consumer lineup is deliberately short: one main checking account, one savings account, three credit cards. Compare that to Chase's five cards and four deposit accounts.

Short lineups are underrated. Most of the fee complexity in this catalog comes from banks running six overlapping products where the cheap one is hidden behind the advertised one. Truist One Checking is the checking account, and the decision is whether you want it.

The apps rate 4.8 on both stores — one of only two banks here that reaches 4.8 or better on iOS and Android simultaneously, which is a better signal than a single high rating on one platform.

Truist One Checking waives its fee for account holders under 25 who provide an expected graduation date. That second condition is unusual and worth reading twice: it isn't a straightforward age waiver like Bank of America's, and it isn't enrollment-linked like PNC's six-year window. It asks for a date, and the waiver is built around it.

For a traditional student that's fine. For someone under 25 who isn't in school, or who doesn't know when they'll finish, it's a condition that may not be satisfiable at all — which effectively narrows this from an age waiver to a student waiver.

Truist Savings pays 0.01% APY. As with Wells Fargo's equivalent, that's about a dollar a year on a $10,000 balance, against roughly four hundred at the top of this catalog. There is no argument for holding a meaningful balance there, and the branch network doesn't compensate for a four-hundred-dollar annual difference.

The straightforward move is to treat Truist as a checking and card relationship and hold savings at one of the online-only banks here.