- Are you affected by the closure of your local bank branch? Email us at [email protected]
- Scroll down for a searchable table of the addresses of all closures this year
In the first half of the year, banks across the country closed 539 local branches, leaving more and more Americans without access to basic financial services.
If this pace continues until the end of 2024, it means that more than 1,000 branches in shopping malls and city centers will be destroyed.
Bank of America closed the most branches: 90 in just six months.
US Bank has also made significant closures, closing 73 of its locations during the same period. Wells Fargo closed 62, Chase 53, and TD Bank 52. Scroll down for the full searchable list of addresses.
The closures, which banks must report to federal regulators, are part of a trend as major banks increasingly open fewer expensive brick-and-mortar branches and focus instead on online services.
US banks closed 539 branches in the first six months of the year
“The majority of Americans, from Gen Z to Baby Boomers, have less need for a traditional bank, which may explain the rising number of brick-and-mortar branches that have closed in the past year,” Andrew Murray, chief data scientist at GOBankingRates, told DailyMail.com.
a recent research by GOBankingRates found that even retirees prefer online banking over banking in a physical branch.
In total, 78 percent of Americans prefer mobile and online banking, and nearly one in four have not visited their bank in the past year.
“Our research of over 1,000 adults clearly shows that demand for personal banking is low across all generations, even among the baby boomer generation aged 65 and over,” Murray explains.
“It’s likely that overhead costs (rent, maintenance, supplies and staff salaries) are a big factor, especially since our research shows how few people go to physical banks.”
Closures can indeed lead to significant savings, as the average cost of operating a freestanding bank branch is approximately $2.6 million per year.
Banks must report all planned closures and openings to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a federal banking regulator.
It publishes a summary of these each week, which DailyMail.com has analysed to compile the details of the total closures so far this year.
The hardest hit state was California with 72 national banks closed in the first half of the year.
New York comes in second with 51 closures, followed by Pennsylvania with 40 closures.
“Over the past few years, we have been making adjustments to our branch network and may continue to consolidate two older, existing branches into one better located location,” Wells Fargo said in a statement to DailyMail.com.
“That does not detract from the importance of our customers and the communities we serve.”
Bank of America also indicated that when a branch closes, it often merges two branches into one.
Bank of America to close most branches in the first half of 2024
“These shifts in our branch network reflect the fact that our customers are increasingly banking digitally for their everyday financial needs and coming to financial centres for more important needs or to have conversations about their finances,” the company said.
The US bank also cited customers’ shift to online banking and a “desire for greater simplicity” as reasons for the mass closures.
“As we evolve together with our customers, we are re-evaluating our physical presence and in some cases consolidating branches in certain markets,” the bank said in a statement.
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