If you're a BB&T shareholder, this should concern you, as a higher efficiency ratio means there's less revenue left over for dividends, buybacks, or growth in book value. A textbook example of this is Bank of America Corp (NYSE: BAC ), which, like BB&T, is also headquartered in North Carolina. Over the past five quarters, its efficiency ratio has averaged out at 77.6%, making it the least efficient of the nation's largest consumer-oriented banks. Not coincidentally, it's also been the least profitable, with an average return on equity of 3.07% since the second quarter of last year. The good news is that BB&T Corporation (NYSE:BBT), by its own calculation anyhow, continues to outperform its peer group by leaps and bounds when it comes to efficiency — though, for the record, according to my own more conservative calculation of BB&T's efficiency ratio, it outperforms its peer group by a considerably smaller margin of 2.3 percentage points. In addition, there are rational explanations for the alarming trend.