Recent years have seen an intensified creation of branch networks by banks. Besides traditional big multi-function branches, networks consisting of specialised branches with differentiated functions have started to crop up. The paper seeks to describe this new development along with its causes and the potential advantages and disadvantages of the two alternative approaches. Theoretical considerations are supported with the analysis of the relationship between the average size of a branch and the result on banking operations per employee. The analysis seems to confirm the superiority of specialised bank branches in terms of their financial performance. The final conclusion is that most big multi-branch banks could boost their results by specialising the branches, with the accompanying reduction in average staffing levels per branch and a stricter segmentation at the level of operational branches.