Branch Numbers Stabilize as Banks Reaffirm the Value of Community Presence

The margin between branch closings and new openings has narrowed to multiyear lows in the U.S. as financial institutions reassess the role physical locations play in the omnichannel experience. Persuaded of branches’ value even in a customer service strategy that is increasingly digital, banks are no longer abandoning branches so much as refining them.

“Banks must operate in an omnichannel reality. For branches, it’s less of a focus on shrinking their presence and more on sharpening their presence,” said Erinn Steffen, COO and financial specialty lead at Mower Agency, which advises on strategy and communications.

From January to September last year, 542 branches closed, the fewest since 2011 and far less than the 3,000 closings in 2021 following the Covid pandemic, according to data from S&P Global, which tracked banks of all sizes.

While institutions in recent years shed branches that missed goals or were casualties of consolidation, branch statistics have returned to “near equilibrium,” noted Steve Reider, president of Bancography, which advises on branch location and other bank strategies. Bancography’s survey figures, which include banks and credit unions, show that among the organizations planning to add to networks in 2026, 42% expect to add a single branch and 58% plan to add more than one branch.

Banks such as Truist have prioritized branch placement and expansion in their long-term strategic plans. On the bank’s third-quarter 2025 earnings call, Truist Chairman and CEO Bill

Rogers discussed the institution’s shift from consolidating sites to opening 100 new branches and renovating 300 existing locations. Truist is targeting “economically vibrant markets,” including Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Dallas, Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

“We’re not only building for the short term within this cycle but ensuring that we’ve got a really good market presence and capacity to grow over the long term,” Rogers said.

Consumers Calling the Shots

Even as digital banking absorbs more transactional business, consumers—especially the older demographic—remain partial to the branch experience, especially for more complex needs, such as advice, loan applications, or opening and closing deposit and investment accounts, according to the ProSight Banking Outlook: 2026 Trends survey. Branch convenience perennially ranks high among consumer respondents in the survey. And in this year’s findings, older age groups expressed stronger sentiment about branch convenience than they did a year earlier.

Mower’s Steffen said banks are diverting so much budget to digital expansion, younger generations, and prospects that they may be undermining the experience of established customers, who like branches. “I wonder if this hyper-fixation means we’re foregoing the fact that older customers have more money, more loyalty, and the ability to adopt more products.”

She sees branches offering wealth management and other specialized services under one roof and inviting multiple generations simultaneously for product awareness and estate planning help.

Strategists say banks will need to make data-backed site decisions leading to smartly spaced, efficiently run footprints in new and renovated spaces along highly visible traffic corridors, strategists say. Many branches are now blending digital and high-touch features geared to generating more revenue with longer opening hours to accommodate community meetings, nonprofit fundraisers, and learning opportunities.

Validation in Aspiration

Reider said construction costs are the biggest headwind to branch growth, as the cost of raw materials and labor shortages drive up these costs. Higher costs may influence planners to opt for in-line and in-store locations over stand-alone sites, Reider said, stressing that net operating expenses have generally declined relative to a decade ago.

For some digital-first banks, extending service to brick-and-mortar outlets is an essential step in their strategy. Successful branches will be built to match the character of their community, incorporating design features that meet the demographic and business needs of the nearby population, strategists add.

For Reider, the longer-run trend will remain in branch closures in lower-population rural areas in favor of openings in the census-defined urban statistical areas, which cover cities, suburbs, and exurbs. Branch planning following retirement patterns will overlap with population-density considerations.

He said it is typically productive to have branches in a top-50 market, especially if a brand is already marketing broadly—for instance, during televised sports events. That’s true even if that market does not have population growth.

“Chicago might not be about a national growth effort at a bank, but it is about Midwest growth. Without branches there, it’s wasted eyeballs,” he said. “Nobody can bank with you unless they know you exist.”

Patrick Nygren, senior vice president and head of retail banking at EverBank, said opportunities in economically diverse California encouraged, as he described it, the “digital-first” national specialty bank to acquire branches of the former Sterling Bank. In the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s closing, EverBank saw a retail and commercial market gap in the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles metro areas. It plans to continue to build its branch network in select markets.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of disruption within financial services the last several years,” said Nygren. “There is a large customer base that likes the convenience and competitive rates of a digital bank; we see this addition of branches as an opportunity to provide the safety and security that comes from giving the choice of brick and mortar.”