BEREFT: For Queens real estate broker Veta Brome, going to the bank is ``like D-Day.''.

When Veta Brome's local Chase Manhattan branch closed two years ago, the Queens real estate broker had no alternative but to transfer her business to a branch two miles away.

Now, it takes Ms. Brome more than twice as long to do her banking, and the service has gone downhill as well. ``Going to the bank has become like D-Day,'' she complains.

In more neighborhoods, merchants and small manufacturers are finding life tougher. In Queens, one of the hardest-hit boroughs, financial industry consolidation has stripped some shopping districts of a neighborhood ba