Much ink is spilled over Wall Street’s interest in private credit and artificial intelligence. But US banks are also getting excited about a more old-school investment opportunity: the bank branch. After spending the past 15 years shrinking their physical footprints, America’s biggest lenders are building again, and a relic of pre-digital finance is staging an unlikely comeback.
PNC Financial Services, a large regional lender with $600bn in assets, said last week it planned to spend $2bn to open 300 new branches over the next five years and renovate all its existing ones. Bank of America said in May it would open more than 150 new financial centres across 60 markets by the end of 2027. Then there’s JPMorgan Chase, which has built at least 1,000 new branches over the past seven years and plans to build another 350 over the next two years. Its network now tops 5,000 branches — more than any rival. It has notably opened more locations than it has closed in each of the past two years.