Here’s the latest bank branch openings and closings around Charlotte this year
Some Charlotte banks recently reduced their number of branches in the area, while smaller local players are still looking to expand.
The city’s biggest bank, Bank of America, is shrinking its local footprint with a handful of permanent branch closures. Others, like JP Morgan Chase, are rapidly adding locations, hoping to build their customer base here.
These changes reflect broader industry trends where branches are becoming less critical for customers thanks to digital banking options — but remain valuable for boosting retail business in a new location.
“Most (banks), when they look at their branch networks, they want to be smaller,” said Nathan Stovall, a Charlotte-based banking analyst with S&P Global. “Those who are adding are going to new markets.”
That’s why you’ll see more new locations from Chase, which holds less than 1% of all deposits in the metro area, than Bank of America, which controls nearly two-thirds of the market.
Here’s which locations are closing and where new branches are popping up so far in 2022.
Which bank branches are closing in Charlotte?
Bank of America makes up the bulk of permanent Charlotte branch closures so far this year. It’s filed paperwork with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency related to five local branches.
The bank is permanently closing three local branches that had been temporarily shuttered for two years during the COVID pandemic and never reopened:
9700 Monroe Road, Charlotte
4415 Sharon Road, Charlotte
1530 Providence Road South, Waxhaw
Employees at those branches have already been relocated to other bank locations.
Bank of America has already permanently closed a couple other branches this year, including the branch at 3021 Prosperity Church Road in January, and the branch at 6611 Carmel Road last month. The Carmel Road location was also closed in the early months of the pandemic.
The closures are part of a plan put in place “well before the pandemic” to optimize Bank of America’s branch and ATM networks, the bank told The Charlotte Observer in a statement. Bank of America made a handful of other closures in Charlotte and elsewhere in North Carolina late last year.
Customers are interacting with the bank online 90% of the time,the bank said. It also considers activity levels and proximity to other locations before closing a branch.
And a handful of shuttered locations only make a small dent in the bank’s extensive branch network here: according to its website, Bank of America still has 46 branches in Charlotte.
Wells Fargo is also permanently closing the branch at its Customer Information Center campus in north Charlotte. Similar to some Bank of America closures, the branch shut down during the pandemic and will not reopen.
Truist, the Charlotte-based combination of SunTrust and BB&T, also closed branches in the first quarter of the year, the bank confirmed earlier this year. Those merger-related branch consolidations, which resulted in 15 local branch closures, wrapped up in March.
Where are bank branches opening?
While hometown banks like Truist and Bank of America are shrinking their local footprint, smaller competitors are adding locations.
JP Morgan continued its rapid expansion through the metro area in the first few months of the year. As of November, the bank had 13 branches here — that number was zero just over two years ago.
LOOK BACK: JP Morgan opens its first branch in Charlotte, directly across from Bank of America HQ
It’s adding four more locations, according to this year’s OCC filings. They’re at:
13733 Conlan Circle in Charlotte
187 Williamson Road in Mooresville
The intersection of Brookshire Boulevard and Smith Farm Road in Charlotte
1255 Concord Parkway in Concord
The Conlan Circle and Concord Parkway branches opened this year, the bank confirmed. The others don’t have an opening date yet.
“Branches remain incredibly important,” Racquel Oden, JP Morgan Chase’s head of market expansion, said in a statement. “We’re proud to continue our expansion into Charlotte.”
Other banks adding branches here include U.S. Bank, which is opening in SouthPark mall at 4525 Sharon Road. The date of that branch’s debut has not been determined. U.S. Bank has been slowly growing its retail presence in Charlotte.
What about temporary closures?
During the coronavirus pandemic, a number of branches temporarily closed due to COVID outbreaks, staff shortages or other reasons, to some customers’ surprise.
Although COVID cases have been waning, there’s still a chance you could stop by your bank branch to find it closed for the day. The city’s largest banks said temporary closures still happen occasionally — but they’re less frequent and aren’t always related to the virus.
“Currently, branch closings may be related to an array of business-as-usual reasons and not specifically to COVID,” Truist said in a statement to the Observer.
Bank of America added that temporary closures have occurred “in areas where we’re seeing fewer visits; or where our staffing is not sufficient for all to remain open.”
And Wells Fargo said that although it experienced temporary closures late last year during the omicron wave, the “vast majority” of branches are open today.
Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Truist all have an online branch locator tool that can be used to check if your location is open before visiting. And those banks have dozens of other locations across the city.
This story was originally published May 5, 2022 at 6:05 AM.
